Is Transmitting On FRS, GMRS & MURS With Ham Radios (Baofeng) Legal?

hey everybody this is Josh ki6 n AZ thanks for coming back to the ham radio crash course today we're gonna do a bit of a deep dive on a topic that's been coming up a lot lately we picked up a lot of new people interested in amateur radio and getting started and the topic of Balfanz fr-s and gmrs frequencies has come up so we're going to cover that topic today but this is going to apply to any amateur radio basically and I'm gonna explain so anyway hang on tight let's get started so what I'm going to endeavor to cover today is is it legal to run fr-s and gmrs frequencies on this radio spoiler alert it's probably not for FRS it's pretty much a given that this is not approved for FRS it's not really proof for gmrs but we're gonna talk about that and the journey starts with kind of a complicated thing that we've got to dance around a little bit radios like this one are part certified by the FCC part ninety includes land mobile radios part 95 is fr-s and gmrs part 97 is amateur radio the part documents and it basically it's a big long document that explains the rules to get certified to be a part of that radio accreditation part ninety land mobile radio is used for like business frequencies like the drive-thru at the Wendy's or Walmart things like that where you have a couple of frequencies that you pay the FCC to access and you get your radios program to use it generally unless you're dealing with a counterfeit Baofeng or one that's running fast and loose with the law bal fangs are part ninety certified okay remember that part ninety certified that doesn't give it the rights if you will to transmit on FRS or gmrs frequencies part ninety seven the difference is there there are subtle but there's actually hardware differences this has on a removable antenna a front programmable screen and runs four to five watts maximum output FRS radios have much restricted output levels and antennas cannot be removable and you definitely can't program in whatever frequency you want in the front case in point this little unit in here really only has controls to move up and down pre-identified channels FRS channels and change the volume and a couple of other things but this is just a family radio system radio that's all it's for is to just have a couple of channels you can cycle through and use so the issues come in the fact that this is a part ninety radio it's not a part ninety five as I've mentioned however and this is where it starts to get a little confusing bow things do produce radios that are part ninety five certified you do have to look for them they have separate model numbers it's certainly not the uv5 are and they're gonna look a bit different mainly it's not going to have that keyboard in the front this keypad and it will likely have some kind of control on the top to switch between channels and those channels will be pre-loaded from the factory and they'll be for GM RS or FRS key point of note here as well FRS does not require a license for use gmrs does to the tune of about seventy five dollars it's a family license it's good for your whole family and not paying that basically gives you access to use gmrs radios to get the higher power output and access to repeater systems that do exist in some areas geo- is a good service if you're interested in something that's kind of a step between FRS and amateur radio gmrs sits right in the middle and might be good for your family particularly if you have family members that want to play radio but don't want to get their amateur radio license yet now the last thing part 97 amateur radio I said this is part ninety certified well what is part 97 certified well that's more like my ft 3d are behind me made by Yaesu does that mean we can't use these in the amateur radio frequency space no not at all and the reason for that is unlike FRS and GM RS which has very rigid restrictions on use meaning from the factory the radios must be hard coded hard locked to the frequencies that they operated on amateurs have a very wide access of frequency space that they can use particularly in the two meter and 70 centimeter band you can take a bow Fang make sure it doesn't outside of the amateur radio spaces via its programming or just don't use it there and you're fine to operate as an amateur in that space because again we're licensed individuals we understand the rules we understand it's illegal to transmit yes on FRS frequencies with a bow Fang or just as an amateur in general using your amateur radio equipment that would be unlawful if you took your amateur radio equipment that's kind of certified by you you the amateur radio license individual is saying yes I know this is in good operating order and is operating within the frequencies of my privileged area before we go any deeper I kind of want to unpack what I just said about amateur radio I can go take an electron ik take it apart and make a radio out of it as long as I can guarantee it's transmitting in the frequency spaces that I'm allocated in it's lawful you can't do that with that for us and gmrs that would be illegal if you transmit it in those spaces because those radios are not type accepted for use in that space amateur radio operators don't have to worry about that though because we are licensed to use those radios on those frequencies and we guarantee that it's following the guidelines set forth by the FCC so if you're ever you're curious or you don't really know how to go forward with your radio pop it off all right take the battery out in the back and look at the label the label should say something like FCC and then have a serial number that serial number can be looked up online and I will post a link in the description for where you can go to search FCC license or pipe part type accepted numbers serial numbers for your individual radio the smoking ape whose another YouTube channel did a deep dive on looking at these labels I'm not going to try and recreate what he did I'll post the link in the description to his video he did a really good job and you should go check it out but to summarize it a bit radios that have been type accepted in the past often will have a serial number and if multiple revisions of a radio come out but don't deviate greatly from the electrical components from the first one they can generally use the same eye with subtle variations and and maybe subtle name changes that's okay so if you do see an FCC logo and then a number you're likely okay but and this is where the bow Fang and other Chinese radios comes in we can't really guarantee what they're doing or really what they're thinking when they made and produce these radios there's some quirky business going on at some times so it's always better to be a little safer than sorry so when you ask me often times on the hammer you a crash-course facebook group and the discord should we use these on FRS or why can't I just use this on on on FRS gmrs well one because it's really not legal and while the FCC is not really pursuing people that do this and generally I would assume people are operating lawfully when they use a bough thing on FRS gmrs and the hard rule the law it is illegal but I will repeat what I just said the FCC is really not policing this so you would be transmitting with more power and most likely much better antennas by using a bow Fang on FRS frequencies likely though nobody's gonna come after you unless you're doing something very nefarious with it if you're just talking your family at Disneyland or I guess from one room to the other room while we're in the human malware a virus world likely no one's going to really make a fuss okay so we covered part 90 part 95 to a point and amateur radio using bow things and again this is going to apply to just about any radio because while these come from the factory with them with no restrictions on their frequency other radios like my a su ft 3d are there in the background is locked to only the amateur radio frequencies however most amateur radio companies have kind of a back door built into these things there's usually a capacitor or a wire you can snip and remove and all of a sudden it opens up frequency transmit capability in a much wider space than the amateur only space that historically is referred to as the Mars Kap mod Mars being military auxilary radio service or system I forget but the idea there is that's a separate frequency space outside of the amateur radio space and when H T's like that one or way back in the past when HT started getting popular they would use amateur radio radios for amateur radio and for Mars which is a volunteer military system and the name just kind of stuck so Mars has existed since then there's also MERS which has another set of frequencies that are devoted to it and you can modify basically any ham radio to operate in any of those frequencies does that make it legal no it still does not but again people have been doing it for decades and there's very few instances I can think of where people get busted by the FCC unless they're doing something very illegal so keep that in mind so lastly the thing I want to hit is is gmrs transmitting a gmrs on the Bao Feng it's true that this just can't do FRS limitations it's it's way open in comparison to the FRS rules in part 95 part 95 for gmrs though is a bit more open you can have a different antenna you can have much higher power output to the tune of an HT where you kind of run into some troubles with this front programmable faceplate that is a little bit problematic when it comes to gmrs rules many people make the mistake meant that bal things are probably fine on gmrs and again nobody's really coming after you I'm sorry to repeat that again so I kind of feel the same but given that I do kind of have this platform and I and I don't want to lead you astray and reminder this isn't legal I'm not a lawyer so this is not legal advice I'm just kind of giving you the lay of the land in case you didn't know this but it's generally my job at least I try to steer people away from what they might get themselves into trouble with amateur radio that's one of the things I try to do so generally my own piece of advice is don't use these on fr-s and gmrs use them for amateur radio that's what they were kind of designed for so what what do you do then if you programmed FRS and GM RS on these well you can use chirp like the video that I put up about a month or two ago you can tell chirp not to transmit on the FRS and GM RS frequencies that's fine you can just listen to FRS and GM RS and not key up that's legal too you just really can't transmit so if you're just taking the straight and narrow rule of the law kind of thing which is generally what I'm kind of obligated to tell you to do being out here on YouTube and in the end we're all adults we can make our own decisions this is a soft line to cross it's not that big a deal but I kind of feel obligated to tell you what some of the nuances are and then you can decide for yourself so for myself personally I may have a couple radios that are programmed for fr-s and gmrs and you may have even seen them on in my videos at the same time I never transmit their I have FRS radios I have gmrs radios they're fine to transmit on if that's what you want to do right there's not a whole lot of reason to have it all here although I understand the argument of them why you might want that so I have included all the links to the part 97 documentation provided by the FCC I provided the link to smokin apes really good video that he does kind of dissecting FCC stickers so make sure to check that out if you have any more questions on where you can use FRS or gmrs frequencies and if you can run them on a bal thing post in the comments below I know this can be kind of a heady conversation and again I'm just giving you what I think is the letter of the law and again you decide you're the adult here generally we don't advocate people do that on the ham radio crash course Facebook group discord etc so just keep that in mind if you're if you're posting about it but you know remember we're just trying to build a larger ham radio community and it helps to provide the information so you can decide but that doesn't necessarily mean we're recommending it anyway I'm Josh ki6 na Z if you enjoyed this give me a thumbs up if this was helpful give me a thumbs up consider subscribing because I do a live stream every Saturday at 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time do check out our Facebook group inner discord and thank you very much for watching see ya [Music]

Channel: Ham Radio Crash Course

Views: 431,987

Keywords: ham radio, Ham radio crash course, how to get your technician license, what to do with ham radio, having fun with ham radio, hoshnasi, introduction to ham radio, ham radio basics, amateur radio, amateur radio antenna, ham radio antenna, ham radio review, amateur radio review, baofeng frs, baofeng gmrs, baofeng uv-5r, baofeng uv-3r, fcc part 90 certified baofeng, fcc part 95 rule changes, fcc part 97

Id: Fb7w_TDpmtw

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020