Two way radios or “walkie talkies” allow two or more people to converse (often while separated by miles) by transmitting and receiving voice signals through the air. While they work very much like a telephone they have the advantage of being able to be used anywhere since they require no central network. The FRS/GMRS two way radio is the kind of two way radio typical consumers will usually come across, and you can purchase them at whatever department stores you normally shop at. The two channels it can work on are GMRS and FRS, hence the name. The first seven channels are shared between FRS and GMRS, while the former gets 8 through 14 and the latter gets 15 through 22. When you want to use these two way radios, you have to use the same channel in order to speak to each other. Every radio that is set to channel 7 can talk to each other, but not to someone whose radio is set to channel 6. As it is not an entirely private medium, you have to watch what you are talking about, as you might be eavesdropped on by someone else on the same channel you do not know is there. Make sure you get the right range for your channel, not to mention privacy. FRS only channels just broadcast at .5 watts, since there are government rules in place preventing it from going further. You can talk within a half mile to a mile of your partner with this particular type of channel, but you have far more space to work with if you use a GMRS channel, as it will work as hard as the radio can output power. However, you do need a license from the FCC in order to use GMRS frequencies to communicate. As stated earlier, privacy is virtually non-existent on a two-way radio but if you want to avoid confusion and communication crowding you should move to a different channel if the one you choose is already being used by others. Since the 22 channel limit of choices there is a shortage of channels to make any channel low on traffic if you are at a crowded location. “Privacy Codes” are provided by most mid to upper range radios which allow a single channel to be broken up into 38-121 sub-channels. This translates into the availability of 1000 plus individual channels from which to choose with many radios.

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