The 3-3-3 Radio Plan and the Emergency Frequency Chart

A radio plan is what makes a handful of handhelds into a net. The 3-3-3 plan is the simplest one that works, it is the one my household and the people I talk to use, and it fits on a card: turn the radio on every three hours, listen for three minutes, on channel 3. Below it is the frequency chart, every service a preparedness group might use, with the one column most charts leave out: who is allowed to transmit there. Members print both as a two-page card; the emergency side, how the weather and civil alerts reach the radio and where the local updates come from, is at the bottom and on the GMRS weather and emergency updates page.

The planRunning a windowSetting it upThe chartEmergency updatesWhat goes wrong

What the three minutes look like when you run them, so the whole group does it the same way.

1. 1Five minutes before the hourRadio on, volume up. On a radio with a squelch control, set it just past where the hiss stops. Channel 3, or your channel, with the privacy code set. If the watches might disagree, start ten minutes early.
2. 2At the hour: listen firstSay nothing for the first thirty seconds. Someone with an emergency goes first, and they may already be calling.
3. 3Check in, one sentence"This is the house, checking in." Each station in the agreed order: the house, the barn, the truck, the neighbor. A reply is one sentence too: "The truck, copy, nothing new."
4. 4Traffic in orderHelp needed first, then roads and water, then everything else. Each transmission under fifteen seconds; a reply has to fit between them. A conversation that needs more moves to the fallback channel so channel 3 stays open.
5. 5The NOAA relayWhoever has the radio with alert monitoring reads the last alert: what, where, until when. If there was none, say so; silence and no alert are different things.
6. 6Minute three: close and switch off"The house, clear until nine." Radio off, or standby if the battery can afford it. The next window is in three hours; the watch says when.

The plan takes an evening to set up, and the setting up is most of the value. In this order.

1. Pick the radio and the channelOne service for the whole group (FRS and GMRS talk to each other; CB and MURS do not). Channel 3, or the family channel, with a privacy code. Write it on tape on every radio.
2. Pick the fallbackA second channel for conversations that run long, written under the first.
3. Set the clocks togetherEvery watch and every radio clock, tonight, and again whenever people meet.
4. Name the relay and the orderWho checks in first, who relays for the far station, who holds the NOAA radio.
5. Decide what a missed window meansOne missed: wait. Two missed: someone goes. Put the number on the card.
6. Run it onceA full window on a calm evening, every station, with the NOAA relay. The plan only exists after it has been run.

Every frequency people in the preparedness world have settled on, by rule or by habit, grouped by service. The colored label on each card is the one to read before you key up: green needs no license, orange needs the GMRS license, blue needs a ham license class, red is listen only. Every one is legal to listen to on a scanner or a radio that receives it.

The plan is how you reach each other. Updates about the weather and the county come from two places, and both are covered in full on the GMRS weather and emergency updates page; here is the short version for the card.

Where the local updates come from

1. 1The family channelChannel 3 with a privacy code, a fallback channel, and the 3-3-3 windows. The NOAA listener relays each alert here: what, where, until when.
2. 2The nearest repeaterFind it on myGMRS or RepeaterBook. Program the channel and tones now, read the listing notes, request access when in doubt, and key it once to confirm. A repeater on a hill turns a handheld's few miles into a county, and that is where organized local updates run.
3. 3Neighborhood and CERT netsAsk the county emergency manager or CERT whether a radio plan exists. Palo Alto, for one, assigns FRS channels by neighborhood and keeps them off 17 and 20 to 22, which share frequencies with GMRS repeater outputs. If none exists, your street is where one starts, and a weekly practice net is what makes it work on the day.
4. 4GMRS 20 with 141.3, and CB 9The two places a stranger might be listening: GMRS channel 20 with the travel tone by convention, CB channel 9 by rule. Worth monitoring on the road; never the only plan.