MURS - Do you use it? How often do you hear traffic?

[vagrant]

1. Do you use MURS frequencies? If so, how often?
2. Do you often hear traffic on MURS in your area? If so, what percentage is business versus personal?
3. Which is more popular in your area, MURS, or FRS/GMRS frequencies?

I often read questions or recommendations for people to use FRS, or GMRS, but MURS does not come up as often. Although limited to two watts, the ability to use a removable/external antenna would definitely give it considerable gain. Since it has opened up as a "Licensed by rule" service I am curious about its popularity among individuals.

 

[merlin]

Since Walmart did away with MURS, there is nothing in my area. Quite a bit of GMRS and being used just like CB.

 

[chief21]

I typically monitor all MURS and FRS frequencies whenever I'm driving and it seems to me that MURS is utilized much less than FRS. Of course, with both services being low power, I recognize that only nearby stations can usually be heard.

 

[footage]

MURS is noisy in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably because many digital mesh network transmitters use the same freqs.

 

[mmckenna]

I hear quite a bit of MURS traffic during the daytime around me. A lot of is schools and retail. I think the local Costco is on MURS.
I hear contractors and other construction type work.

I don't think I've ever heard traffic that I'd call personal.

I hear quite a bit of both MURS and FRS traffic.

 

[W8UU]

MURS is dead here. Nothing. Nothing at all.

GMRS is sprouting a couple of repeaters that are operated similar to ham radio with weekly QSO nets and otherwise very little traffic. Being close to the Hocking Hills State Park system and a lot of outdoor hunting areas, you hear the Jeepsters and off-road crowd occasionally. Usually a lot of filthy language that comes and goes when they're mobile.

A local public school near me uses Channel 22 FRS to coordinate traffic with school buses and parents dropping off and picking up kids. That can get comical.

 

[chrismol1]

A hotel or 2 uses MURS, walmart still has MURS 2070s & 2050s. GMRS and FRS more, likely easily obtainable off the shelf radios or buying packs of radios online UHF more popular, smaller antenna. There's also some UHF dot business band

 

[Hans13]

1. Do you use MURS frequencies? If so, how often?
2. Do you often hear traffic on MURS in your area? If so, what percentage is business versus personal?
3. Which is more popular in your area, MURS, or FRS/GMRS frequencies?

I often read questions or recommendations for people to use FRS, or GMRS, but MURS does not come up as often. Although limited to two watts, the ability to use a removable/external antenna would definitely give it considerable gain. Since it has opened up as a "Licensed by rule" service I am curious about its popularity among individuals.

1. Yes and not often.
2. I used to hear traffic and it seemed to be an even mix between business and personal. Within the last year or so, I have heard very little MURS except a small data burst in the middle of the night that has been doing that for as long as I've lived here.
3. FRS/GMRS seems much more popular in my area.

 

[alcahuete]

We have a couple groups out here in the desert and mountain area that use MURS. I have also heard a ski resort in the mountains (about 40 miles away) use MURS from time to time. In LA and Vegas though, MURS is pretty heavily utilized.

 

[vagrant]

My monitoring of MURS has been low, but it is always business related chatter. Thus, my curiosity about personal use elsewhere. I am using a discone vs a 150 MHz antenna with some gain, so limited that way on RX.

If anything, MURS is a significant improvement over CB and FRS, due to the ability to achieve a ground plane and friendly SWR with an external antenna, plus CTCSS to block out riff-raff like me. I really expected it to be more popular for personal use.

 

[KevinC]

Where we go for spring break way out in the sticks I hear what I'm guessing is a wireless intrusion system on 151.820. Automated voices saying "motion detected zone x".

 

[alcahuete]

I really expected it to be more popular for personal use.

Nowhere close to as many radios as FRS and nowhere near as cheap.

 

[sallen07]

Nowhere close to as many radios as FRS and nowhere near as cheap.

There are CCR MURS radios too. $39 or less. And they actually work "well enough".

But you won't find them on the shelf at your local retail establishment like you will FRS radios.

 

[DeoVindice]

Where we go for spring break way out in the sticks I hear what I'm guessing is a wireless intrusion system on 151.820. Automated voices saying "motion detected zone x".

Dakota Alert driveway alarms, probably.

 

[bill4long]

1. Do you use MURS frequencies? If so, how often?
2. Do you often hear traffic on MURS in your area? If so, what percentage is business versus personal?
3. Which is more popular in your area, MURS, or FRS/GMRS frequencies?

Northside Indianapolis:

1. No. I listen, because I'm a radio nut (and licensed ham, etc.) I have a LMR license for my business, but I would have no problem using MURS around here if LMR were not available.

2. Walmart on channel 5 a couple miles down the road. Menards and a small airport on channel 4. Absolutely no activity on channels 1 thru 3 except from some illegal operators using ham radios six or seven years ago on channel 2.

3. Several businesses use FRS around here. Very little personal activity. GMRS (channels 15 - 22) all have repeaters on them and most of the repeaters are linked to the Midwest GMRS Repeater system which has about 100 repeaters connected. It's basically ham radio "lite" and gets a fair amount of traffic.

 

[rescuecomm]

I have a PRO-197 with a bank scanning all 22 FRS and the five MURS channels on carrier squelch.
When the local Walmart went silent on wide band channel (4), MURS has been quiet. There was some people using MURS 2 for some outdoor activity for a while. Haven't heard then in a while. On the way to the waste recycle center, I hear FRS being used by a local school at let out time. Also road construction crews working on the local highways use of FRS for traffic control.

The local Upstate GMRS group is getting ready to put it's fourth repeater up soon and very local to me. When it was on 440, I could hit it with 1/2 watt. On GMRS, it should be real good around the AO. There's two GMRS repeaters on 675 that come in real good here, but interfere too much if both are keyed up. One is 40 miles away in NC listed at Forest City.

 

[Hans13]

plus CTCSS to block out riff-raff like me.

We have CTCSS and DCS as well as FM on the Chicken Band now. I've been playing around with a couple of President Randy II FCC handheld CBs and am quite impressed. These perform, even with the stock rubber duck antenna, far better than any legit handheld I have used from the 1970's. FM sounds great.

ETA: (I am comparing handhelds below and ignoring mobiles or bases.)

Still, I prefer UHF (FRS/GMRS/some Color Dot frequencies) for most simplex because the antenna can be small. The radio can be small. And, the penetration through buildings and the like seems superior, everything else being held equal.

Next in my preferences would be MURS. The antenna is often a little longer than the UHF radios and the size of the radio is sometimes a little larger.

Last place would go to CB. The antenna is pretty large by comparison, but the Randy II FCC is a couple of inches shorter than any of my classic CB handheld rubber ducks from the early 1990's and before. Before, the radios were big and bulky but the Randy II FCC brings it down to MURS size. Very light with a lithium ion battery. Distance with the stock antenna has been about the same as MURS so far in my limited testing. SSB on the latest handheld would be very interesting.

 

[K6GBW]

I use MURS, but only when I'm out in the woods or desert. When I'm in the city it's just a squawking mess. We used it in Grand Canyon and it worked fantastic! Our backpacking group was made up of youngsters (fast) and elders (slow) so our party stretched out over more than a mile. The two watt MURS radios were excellent down in the canyon. On day two we even made contact with my wife up on the rim. She was talking to me the last two hours coming out on Bright Angel Trail. One thing we did notice is that MURS between cars was not as good as GMRS. But we were never more than about two hundred yards apart and they worked okay for that. But GMRS was definetely better, probably because the shorter wavelength gets out of the car better.

A few years ago there was a group of characters on MURS channel 3 that was obvously using higher power mobiles and base radios. They used the hell out of it for several years. The traffic sounded a lot like CB radio with just idle chit chat. Then one day they were just gone. Not sure what happened.

 

[bill4long]

One thing we did notice is that MURS between cars was not as good as GMRS. But we were never more than about two hundred yards apart and they worked okay for that. But GMRS was definetely better, probably because the shorter wavelength gets out of the car better.

Were you trying to use them inside the vehicles with the antennas inside? Because that's a Faraday Cage situtation.

 

[oregontreehugger]

Hear some limited business use and only very occasionally any personal voice use on MURS. Those previously-mentioned Dakota driveway/perimeter alarms pop up from time to time ("Alert Zone 1, Alert Zone 1"). And I believe the Garmin Astro dog tracking collars also use MURS, so sometimes there will be quick chirps from those. (Interestingly, last year was randomly picking up what sounded like encrypted users with brief transmissions.)

FRS/GMRS blister pack radios are far, far more popular in this neck of the woods. The usage seems to be split between construction companies, road flaggers, and families. Plenty of GMRS repeaters up, but only have heard a conversation maybe once or twice on those.