Get a license or forget about it. That is your decision.
The legislation that brought about the FRS/GMR radios was part of a big package. It was a real money cow for our nothing but honest congressmen and women. I am sure the transactions were all handled in a legal manner with the money flowing into re-election funds, into spouses lobbying businesses, and cooperate jets flying congressmen overseas and across the US on junkets.
The over all legislation effected more then just portable radios. It also affected broadcast bands. Meaning TV, radio, cell phones, wi-fi and other modes of transmitted communications.
While all this sounds great Congress is required to make legislation fiscally neutral. Meaning it will have a neutral impact on the Treasury. Wink! Wink! Many of us will see the cost impact when we have to buy a digital to replace our analogy TV. Ouch, we have a TV in the living room, the computer room and the bedroom in which we have our stationary bike. But another negative impact is on public safety communications. Radio frequencies were taken from wide band (analog) to narrow band (digital). Federal agencies had to change over first. In the fire world with a lot of coop agreements between State, Local, and Federal agencies this is having a costly impact. When there is a critical incident all agencies need to talk with each other. Nothing like a back fire from agency A burning over a volunteer fire department engine do to poor communications. Or a helicopter on analog trying to talk to a unit thats radio has been narrow banded to comply with Congresses mandate.
How does Congress make the change over neutral to the Treasury. It charges the small user a license fee!
One of the problems now is the Federal agencies have under Congressional Mandate been replacing their radio systems with narrow band radios. Because there are many cooperating agencies that cannot make the change the radios must be backward compatible with wide band radios. The net effect is that they cost more money. Contractors who pickup many Federal Safety jobs in the outsource process are purchasing these surplus radios on the Internet. Many of these are contractor run Mexican Fire crews. (Yep, replacing US labor with illegals) So you have radios that do not match up and according to this mornings Sacramento Bee newspaper you have non-English speaking people who are not properly trained and cannot communicate with the professional who might keep them alive. And in turn if a Spanish-speaking fire fighter sees a dangerous situation he may not be able to properly advise English-speaking firemen. The Federal Land Management Agencies maintained large caches of radios to be used during emergencies. These were a National Asset that was made obsolete.
Dispatch Centers are a very complex scene with dispatchers operating on numerous radio frequencies. When units cannot talk to each other in the field they try and relay traffic through the dispatcher centers. An untimely process which is subject to human error.
I rather doubt that the FCC has units running around tracking down people who do not have radio licenses. So it is up to you. It is like driving down the freeway at five miles over the speed limit on Tuesday. Is Tuesday a special enforcement day or not. Most likely not.
