The Lingo of a Walkie Talkie

A walkie talkie is a great way to keep in touch with friends and family. Whether you’re out exploring the wilderness or watching Stranger Things with your kids, walkie talkies provide a convenient and fun way to stay connected. But, before you buy and hit the push-to-talk button for the first time, it’s important to understand the lingo that comes with these devices.

For starters, there’s the privacy code. All walkie talkies on a channel share it, so any radio on the same channel can pick up your conversation. To cut down on unwanted chatter, most consumer radios include privacy codes (also called CTCSS or DCS codes, sub-audible tones, or interference eliminator codes). When you set a code, your radio sends a tone or digital signal along with your voice that people can’t hear, and your receiver only opens up for transmissions that carry the same code. That keeps other groups’ conversations out of your speaker. It does not make your conversation private: a radio with no code set, or a scanner, can still hear everything on the channel. A privacy code is a filter, not encryption. See how channels and privacy codes work for more.

Encryption is a different thing. It scrambles a transmission so that only radios with the matching key can make sense of it. It isn’t limited to military radios: some digital business and public-safety radios offer it as an option, for example AES encryption on Motorola’s MOTOTRBO line. Typical consumer FRS and GMRS handhelds don’t have it, and on GMRS the FCC rules don’t allow coded or hidden-meaning messages (plain “10-codes” are allowed). So with a consumer walkie talkie, assume anyone nearby with a radio could be listening.

Next, the voice protocol. Because only one person can speak at a time, walkie talkie users have a few standard words to keep things orderly. “Over” means you’ve finished talking and are waiting for a reply. “Out” means the conversation is finished and no reply is expected. The two aren’t normally used together, so “over and out” is more a movie line than proper radio procedure. Many radios also play a short tone when you release the button to signal that you’re done talking. These habits are mostly a matter of simple courtesy. See using a two-way radio for the first time for a short walk-through.

Some walkie talkies let you send text messages instead of voice. This can help when you need to stay quiet or when it’s too noisy to talk. You can also find models with GPS that show your position, or the position of other radios in your group, on a small screen. FCC rules limit FRS and GMRS handhelds to brief text and location messages, and the radios generally need to support the same features to exchange them, so check before you buy.

Top image: “Walkie Talkies, Stabo freecomm 220” by Erkaha, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.