After my failed experiment with flammable CB radios, I bought a nice new CB radio on Amazon, got it for free due to accumulated credit card "points." Also found one of those all-in-one "Help" radios that were sold in the 90's at Sears and other places, and it worked fine.

The good news: CB Radio is not dead - I'm 7 straight-line miles from the nearest interstate, and there's lots of chatter audible on channel 19 - and other channels. That 11-meter radio wave on AM - even at a measly 4 watts - has an easy time of getting out and over things outdoors. I did a few experiments and with just a magnet-mount antenna, I have a reliable "reachability radius" around my house of about 3 miles, which isn't too bad. If I had an SSB setup, I know it would do better, but there's a limit to how much I want to invest in CB.

The bad news: CB Radio is not dead. I don't know what would cause a person to think that making fart noises into an echo-box and blasting those noises into a super-amplified CB radio across a randomly changing assortment of channels for literally 60 continuous minutes was a good use of their time, but I guess that CB Radio is sort of the "Facebook of the air" so from that perspective it makes sense.

I guess for inter-communication with truckers, there's still some use for CB, but I get why GMRS is "the thing" now.

There are a few repeaters for GMRS around here, and even with a tiny 5w Baofeng garbage radio, I can easily reach a repeater that is 10 straight-line miles away from my basement, and that repeater has a rock-solid 35 mile radius of coverage. The interoperability with FRS is a huge plus. I like the sense of formality on GMRS and the simplicity of it as compared to ham radio. The nationwide nets and regional nets are pretty cool too.
If you haven't checked MyGMRS.com yet, take a look, it's a great resource.

In terms of local & regional "grid power out" emergency comms, I'm going with GMRS over CB or any Ham radio solutions. I loved my time in Ham radio, but satcoms, cellular, and DMR commercial radio have really reduced and eliminated the need*. Even down in Florida, while there was some ham radio stuff going on, Also, FRS is nearly useless beyond a really small radius (especially if you have evergreens!) If you have a local repeater, by all means, get a GMRS radio that is repeater-capable and set yourself up with it.


*Yes, I know, I know. And for HF comms, it's hard to beat the flexibility of ham. But consider that the best article I could find about Ham radio for Hurricane Ian was actually almost entirely a Satcom/Cellular story, with a teeny bit of ham radio that was not strictly necessary in there.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/hurric...-sanibel-island