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In my books, I mention having a communications plan for after things fall apart, but what about now? Every time I travel or meet up with my group, we have a sort of loose communications plan. I'll share a few of them here and then we'll go into detail later.
First, when I travel long distances, I always plan for the ability to be able to make contact with others without a cell phone. What I do is I research what GMRS repeaters are along my route and where. I request permission from the owners to use them (there's a button in mygmrs.com) if needed. Then, I program them into my vehicle radio (it has 1000 memory channels) in the order that I will pass them. Why in that order? So that as I'm driving, as I pass each town, i just turn the channel up one on the vehicle radio. To pass the time on long road trips, I use the time to make contact with others via these repeaters along the way as practice in using my gear.