What is a Walkie Talkie?

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Our walkie-talkie radios have many uses in many different industries

Our walkie talkie radios are also supplied by Motorola, Kenwood, Icom, Barrett, Tait, Vertex Standard, Entel and Codan.

A walkie-talkie (more formally known as a handheld transceiver) is a hand-held portable, two-way radio transceiver. The first walkie-talkies were developed for military use during World War II, and spread to public safety and eventually commercial and jobsite work after the war. Major characteristics include a half-duplex channel (only one radio transmits at a time, though any number can listen) and a push-to-talk switch that starts transmission. Typical walkie-talkies resemble a telephone handset, possibly slightly larger but still a single unit, with an antenna sticking out of the top. Where a phone's earpiece is only loud enough to be heard by the user, a walkie-talkie's built-in speaker can be heard by the user and those in his immediate vicinity. Hand-held transceivers may be used to communicate between each other, or to vehicle-mounted or base stations.

For those of us who grew up before the 1990s may recall that no respectable private eye or detective story was complete without a walkie talkie being used while following a suspect or chasing a criminal!

If you enjoy outdoor activities, enjoy riding your motorbike at weekends, work at a college or school, perhaps you work in a pub, club? Are you at home caring for a child perhaps? if you answered yes to any of the above then you would find a walkie talkie a very useful gadget. You may also need a walkie talkie if you move around a lot in your job. The benefit over mobile phones is that they are license free and do not have any associated call charges.

Some walkie talkies have a wider range than the average baby monitor, if you are at home all the time and the baby is asleep upstairs and you need to visit a neighbour? Walkie talkies have a wider range and suit this situation perfectly, a "baby monitor" mode is available for some walkie talkies so you can leave one in the baby's room and take the other with you, when the baby wakes or begins to cry you will know at once!

For the workers in the pubs or clubs, or for teachers and staff members in schools would find walkie talkies very effective and useful when communicating with colleagues. For all of these working environments emergencies can happen and resposding to those emergencies could be an issue, unless you had a walkie talkie! You can clip a walktie talkie to your clothing, they are light weight and easily carried about your person.

You can use a walkie talkie while out on youre bike (like Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman did on The Long Way Round) and fit the earpieve into your motorcycle helmet, also available is a Push to Talk button that is mounted on the motorcycle handlebar. The range for these types of Walkie Talkies is over a mile, come rain or shine. The walkie talkie can also compete with the mobile phone market as no roaming applies to a walkie talkie so you can avoid their hefty prices.

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