Picking up a Construction Company on FRS 1

[Analogrules]

Is it legal for contractors/businesses to use Family Radio Service frequencies?

 

[ecps92]

Yes - Despite the word "Family" in the name

https://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/family-radio-service-frs

FRS is licensed by rule. This means an individual license is not required to operate an FRS radio provide you comply with the rules. You may operate an FRS radio regardless of your age, and for personal or for business use if you are not a representative of a foreign government.

Is it legal for contractors/businesses to use Family Radio Service frequencies?

 

[Analogrules]

Wow, very interesting. I am surprised more businesses/stores don't use them in that case.

 

[ecps92]

But .... they do... and most with 67.0 hz

Wow, very interesting. I am surprised more businesses/stores don't use them in that case.

 

[W3DMV]

Heavy use here also. A crew is building a new school a block from my
house and they are well organized.

Different crews spread over many channels.

Steel & crane operator on Ch 1
Masons on Ch 2
Forman & supervisors on Ch 5
Electricians on Ch 6
Earth movers on Ch 10
---
Their better organized than most military ops and lots
of fun to listen to.

Grocery stores
Dentist office. The nurse can tell the doc when the patient is
in the chair and ready.

Every motel/hotel in town.

The list goes on and on. Everyone here has vacated licensed business
channels and moved to FRS.

------

 

[Wally46]

Sometimes I hear them used for traffic control when they are working on a road. Not very interesting though. They mostly say,"Your last car is a blue Ford Mustang." Or whatever make and model it happens to be.

 

[johnls7424]

Used to hear back in the early 2000's companies using FRS. However since it's only 1/2 watt and most bubble pack radios aren't really durable they phased out. Since MURS radios have been implemented and have more duriable radio bodies, antennas and PTT buttons it has become more favorable then plain old FRS. Even so if you use radios on the daily it's not really all that expensive to go apply for a business band IG license and have a frequency designated to you which you can voice scramble/encrypt if you wish. Most don't though.

 

[Analogrules]

However, even though it's technically not legal to transmit on FRS using a Baofeng, I would not be surprised if many businesses are buying those radios now to communicate and set them to an illegal 4 Watts, high power. As long as they aren't interfering with public safety, no one may even notice.

 

[johnls7424]

However, even though it's technically not legal to transmit on FRS using a Baofeng, I would not be surprised if many businesses are buying those radios now to communicate and set them to an illegal 4 Watts, high power. As long as they aren't interfering with public safety, no one may even notice.

Happens more then you even want to believe. Especially on MURS. All you need is a business band radio or even simply a Amateur Radio with more watts and your good. Frequency lists are easily available via Google. I would say more then half of the users that do that are doing exactly that. Better coverage, better, clear voice transmissions, if you have voice scramble programmed on the radio that can be used ( even though it's illegal).

 

[scannersnstuff]

the primary reason of using 67.0 is because it's the lowest ctcss tone. i had also heard that supposedly the lower you went in ctcss, the more stable the tone was ?. i wonder how many get setup in csq.

 

[johnls7424]

Having lower tone codes and I've tested this before does not affect the stability of your radio transmissions. Even PL to DPL tone codes does not affect transmission. Motorola created its PL style tone codes to act as interference eliminators and so multiple people can use one frequency and not hear each other. Even on bubble pack radios for example we will use Motorola. If you change the interference eliminator number for let's say FRS channel 1. It doesn't change that frequency, but the tone code Motorola picks for that channel.

 

[mmckenna]

the primary reason of using 67.0 is because it's the lowest ctcss tone. i had also heard that supposedly the lower you went in ctcss, the more stable the tone was ?. i wonder how many get setup in csq.

It has more to do with it being the "default" tone on many consumer radios. In other words, when they take them out of the box, they already have it activated on the channel. If they don't know what it is, they usually don't mess with it.
Some Radio Shack GMRS radios came with the 100Hz tone as default many years ago. I used to use 462.550 with a 100Hz pl tone as my "family" channel. Every year the county fair would be in town and I'd have to listen to them since it was the default channel/tone on their radios.

I've heard, over the years, that higher CTCSS tone frequencies can decode faster, but in reality we are talking about a few milliseconds. Not that anyone could really "hear" the difference.

One issue with the higher frequencies is that they can end up in the audio stream if the radio doesn't have a low cut filter. Some higher CTCSS tones, like 254.1hZ will come across in the speaker as a low rumble in the background. Most commercial radios have a low cut circuit in them that will prevent this from happening, but some radios don't.

 

[ecps92]

Where is the like button

And those FRS on the higher channels cause interference to GMRS when they YELL and splash into the input 12.5 khz off, causing Repeaters to ker-chunk away.

Ahhh yes, the ole 192.8 and higher hummm

It has more to do with it being the "default" tone on many consumer radios. In other words, when they take them out of the box, they already have it activated on the channel. If they don't know what it is, they usually don't mess with it.
Some Radio Shack GMRS radios came with the 100Hz tone as default many years ago. I used to use 462.550 with a 100Hz pl tone as my "family" channel. Every year the county fair would be in town and I'd have to listen to them since it was the default channel/tone on their radios.

I've heard, over the years, that higher CTCSS tone frequencies can decode faster, but in reality we are talking about a few milliseconds. Not that anyone could really "hear" the difference.

One issue with the higher frequencies is that they can end up in the audio stream if the radio doesn't have a low cut filter. Some higher CTCSS tones, like 254.1hZ will come across in the speaker as a low rumble in the background. Most commercial radios have a low cut circuit in them that will prevent this from happening, but some radios don't.

 

[balibago]

family owned

It could be they are a large family owned construction company. With this economy you never know what to expect.

 

[balibago]

Anyone know what year Motorola came up with these tones?

 

[RocketNJ]

Looks like early 1950's.

A historical and technical overview of tone squelch (PL, CG, QC, CTCSS, etc.) systems.

 

[johnls7424]

With modern radios.. At least to my knowledge I've never experienced any " humming noise" from using higher tone codes or even DPL inverted tone codes. That seems to me at least a problem from the past with older radios and/or lower end repeaters where having higher PL and DPL tone codes created a problem on either the input or output end for radio transmissions.

 

[mmckenna]

With modern radios.. At least to my knowledge I've never experienced any " humming noise" from using higher tone codes or even DPL inverted tone codes. That seems to me at least a problem from the past with older radios and/or lower end repeaters where having higher PL and DPL tone codes created a problem on either the input or output end for radio transmissions.

It had to with the lack of a low pass filter in the receive audio path. The PL tones would get passed on through. The lower ones couldn't be heard, but the higher one often would be.
I think the last radio I saw that did this was an Icom F-420 UHF mobile back in the late 1990's. It did have a selectable low pass filter in the programming. Setting that to on took care of the issue. Newer radios tend to have this built in and not selectable.

It isn't a big deal. Kind of hard to hear in a mobile environment. I think I only heard it when the truck was off and I was on the radio.

 

[SCPD]

I've seen allot of paving companies such as cutler using frs, murs to own licensed intinerant frequencies. I noticed this with other companies and flag men to small site construction projects. Most aren't a bother. Sometimes interesting actually. I recall once a paving company working on interstate 10 late using murs near a wal mart. Wal mart went and told them over the radio to get off their frequencies now or they'll report it to fcc lol. They were using csq and the construction a pl. Next day the company was using frs and continued to during the work.

 

[johnls7424]

I've seen allot of paving companies such as cutler using frs, murs to own licensed intinerant frequencies. I noticed this with other companies and flag men to small site construction projects. Most aren't a bother. Sometimes interesting actually. I recall once a paving company working on interstate 10 late using murs near a wal mart. Wal mart went and told them over the radio to get off their frequencies now or they'll report it to fcc lol. They were using csq and the construction a pl. Next day the company was using frs and continued to during the work.

It's funny you should mention Walmart and their accusations. They are the biggest offenders of not knowing MURS and radio laws. They were fine over 20,000 dollars some years back for programming a radio without frequency coordination to any degree and were pirating someone else's frequency. Not only causing massive interference, but pulled the same thing saying it's our frequency, blah blah blah. Long story short they were wrong and were fined 25,000 dollars and were stricken from using licensed frequencies at many of their stores hence why they now use MURS... Okay I've tanged enough on that.. As for FRS radios some places are actually better off doing that. Like you said construction companies where you need it from job to job. Don't want to spend a lot of money and the range is limited to less than quarter mile. It works. A bubble pack of 3 radios usually costs the price of 1 business band or MURS radio so it makes sense especially for the little guy!!