Two way radio walkie talkie radios are the type of radios you see people carrying around. As ruled by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), handheld radios may not have more than 5 watts of power.
There are two major formats for walkie talkie type radios. They are Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radio and Very High Frequency (VHF) radio. Neither frequency band is inherently better than the other. They each have their pluses and minuses. Both formats are effective ways to communicate with another person so deciding on the right radio for you depends on your application. See this article for a more detailed description about which radio is right for you: UHF versus VHF.
If you go down to your local building supply or discount store you will see two way radio walkie talkie radios that say they have a range of 14 miles, 22 miles, or something like that. Yet when you take them home you find that they don’t even go a mile. Why is that?
One of the biggest factors to reducing range is the obstacles in the path of transmission. These obstacles absorb and reflect the radio waves so while a radio advertised to go 22 miles may actually do that if both users are standing on peaks of a mountain with nothing in between, the same radio can’t go a half mile through a forest. Two-way radios communicate “line of sight,” which means that if you can see between two points, the radio should be able to communicate between these two points. Consider that the radio the Apollo astronauts on the moon used to communicate only used one watt of power and you’ll get the picture on this.
If you consider that two points on land or water become invisible after about five miles between them because of the curvature of the Earth, you can understand that communicating more than five miles becomes difficult even if there are no obstacles between the radios. The key to getting more range is either to raise the height of the antenna, increase the power of the radio, or both.
For a more detailed discussion on two way radio walkie talkies, read the free book Two-Way Radio Success: How to Choose Two-Way Radios, Commercial Intercoms, and Other Wireless Communication Devices for Your Business .