Do you like walkie-talkies?

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Do you like walkie-talkies?

i think they are cool i remember as a young 'un back in the 60s and 70s, the walkie talkies basically were CB radios with the same channel crystals tuned to 27 Mhz. a CBer could talk to a walkie talkie or vice-versa. they also had much greater range than today's walkie talkies [the unlicenced ones], up to a mile or so. the post-1977 walkie talkings raised the frequencies up to 49 Mhz and changed the modulation to FM, which made for much clearer audio but much shorter range, no more than a few hundred feet at most.

I have a hard time understanding them or CBs.

pardon me for my density, but do you mean aurally understanding their speaker output clarity, or of the concept?

Blabby, do you they're changing them back? I've seen walkie talkies marketed as having a range of 17 miles. They're small and sold in sporting goods stores. They have numerous channels so maybe they're just a mini-CB?

I used to talk on CBs a lot as a kid in the 70s &80s on the CB in my Dad's pickup and also on the marine radio in our boat.

there are VHF and UHF walkie talkies that are higher power, that require licensure. even then, 17 miles is a stretch unless an external antenna at an elevation, is used. VHF is mostly line-of-sight signal propagation, same for UHF, so curvature of the earth and big geographic features/buildings cut into range. i'm not aware of any move to change back to 27 MHz, the up-shift in frequency was done for a reason, to free up space for local communications on CB that was increasingly being cut into by walkie talkie use.

Understanding people who speak on them.

i think if you heard the FM models you might have better ability to understand them. FM didn't "squawk," like the regular AM CB radios or walkie talkies, aka "squawk boxes."

They're okay. Haven't really used one in a long time, though.

Walkie-Talkies in the Citizens' Band (CB) usually operate on a single fixed frequency of 27.125 MHz (there are exceptions), and at about 100mW of output power, resulting in an effective range of about 1/4 mile or less. Their use does not require a license. For a long time, Radio Shack was the most popular brand.

Walkie-Talkies in the Family Radio Service (FRS) usually operate on one of 14 frequencies between 462.5500 MHz and 467.7250 MHz (there are exceptions), and at about 100mW to 5W of output power, resulting in an effective range of about 1/4 mile or less. Their use does not require a license. I prefer the Bao-Feng brand.

Walkie-Talkies in the Amateur Radio Service (ARS) may operate on almost every Amateur Radio band, and at no greater than 2000W of output power, resulting in an effective line-of-site range of about 25 miles (for VHF and UHF) or global (for HF or less). Their use requires a license. I prefer the Yaesu and Kenwood brands.

I never really used em. I wish me & the higherups in my department at my 2nd job were allowed to use em. We worked in a really huge store & I would sometimes get paged to go to the opposite end cuz someone was doing a special project & needed me to get something & then I'd have to go back to the side I was on to go get the thing & then go back & forth again. Walkie-talkies would of saved us alittle bit of time sometimes. I'm not sure why management wouldn't allow us to use em, it was probably a BS reason

my sister useta have the fm 49 mhz walkie talkies, have not used them since cell phones became ubiquitous. but i liked using 'em. one day in 2008, i was up about a hundred feet above the beach on a cliff overlook, and i could at that height communicate with sis down on the beach over a mile away as it was still line of sight, even though i could no longer see her at that distance. after that distance, [10mw effective radiated power has strict limits on range] her signal gracefully faded just like an fm transmitter's range would have done, the signal got multipathy and shushy-sounding, then disappeared.