[__mattya]

You can listen without a license. I was able to hear everything on a $15 handheld and it was immensely helpful.

In an emergency you are allowed to transmit without a license. There were plenty of unlicensed calls going to the Mt. Mitchell repeater.

All that being said, I am definitely getting my license once this is over.

[carlosjobim]

> You can listen without a license

You can also talk without a license, who's going to stop you? Especially in an emergency situation.

[j_bum]

I don’t know anything about this topic, so forgive me if I’m wrong.

Would there be any risks associated with increased “free for all” amounts of radio traffic going around during a natural disaster like this? Couldn’t specific channels become cluttered to the point where signal is too disrupted to read, or is that not quite how it works?

[carlosjobim]

I think there are thousands of frequencies. Traffic can split up into those.