In the United States, the primary frequencies designated for general public use are called Family Radio Service( FRS) and General Mobile Radio Service( GMRS). Modern, digital walkie-talkies may work on dozens of possible channels (or frequency bands), so in order to communicate with your buddies, you'll need to make sure you're all using the same channel before hitting the river.Īll walkie-talkies are built to work on specific radio frequencies. Those units are most often kilohertz (KHz) and megahertz (MHz). But in short, radios transmit and receive signals on any of millions of possible frequencies, which are denoted by units of Hertz (cycles per second). If you're not up to speed on radio technology basics, be sure to read How Radio Works.

Keep reading and you'll see how they developed and why they're such vital communication devices. Even baby monitors employ one-way walkie-talkie technology, so that you know if Junior is sleeping peacefully or attempting escape.

Wilderness lovers tote walkie-talkies so that they can keep in touch during hiking or hunting trips out where cell phone cover age is non-existent. They're designed primarily for short-range communications, in which groups of people are within a few miles of each other.īusinesses use walkie-talkies so that employees can chat efficiently in and around their indoor and outdoor structures. The handsets transmit directly to each other, so they still work when cell networks fail during natural disasters or power outages. And best of all, they don't rely on finicky cell phone signals. In other words, unlike your phone, in which both parties can interrupt or add to the conversation in a ceaseless flow of sound, walkie-talkies use a push-to-talk (PTT) system - you have to press a button in order to speak, and you have to release that button to hear sound coming from other units.īecause you don't have to dial a number each time you want to transmit, walkie-talkies are quick and easy to use. They have a half-duplex channel, which indicates that only one walkie-talkie on a channel can transmit a signal at one time, although many radios can receive that same signal. Walkie-talkies are battery-powered transceivers, meaning they can both send and receive radio messages.

Stereogram walkie talkie