Walkie-talkie



         


A walkie-talkie is a portable, bi-directional radio transceiver, first developed for military use. Major characteristics include a half-duplex (only one of receive or transmit at a time) channel and a push-to-talk switch that starts transmission. The typical physical format looks like a telephone handset, possibly slightly larger but still a single unit, with an antenna sticking out of the top.

Prior to the change of CB radio from licensed to un-licensed status, the typical walkie-talkie available in retail stores in North America was limited to 100 milliwatts of power on transmit and the 27 MHz CB channels. Other walkie-talkies were licensed for police and commercial bands, typically in the 49 MHz range, where the first cordless phones were also assigned.

The first radio receiver/transmitter to be nick-named walkie-talkie was the Motorola SCR-300 invented by Henryk Magnuski in 1940. Motorola also produced the SCR-536 radio during the war, and it was called the "Handie-Talkie".

The personal walktie-talkie has now become popular again with the Family Radio Service. FRS operates in the GMRS band, which is itself used for business walkie-talkies.

[Top]

External link:





  View Live Article   This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License