The Bigfoot Hunter's Guide
Hand-held Radios

Hand-held Radios (also known as Walkie-Talkies) provide simple and direct two-way communications for the Bigfoot Hunter. They allow all members of the party to maintain constant communication on the same frequency. Unlike cellphones,radios don't rely on towers to maintain a connection. This makes them somewhat more reliable than cell phones in remote areas for short distance communications. They are easily clipped on a belt or stuffed in a shirt pocket and having one will permit you to save your cellphone for emergency situations.

Hand-held Radios are portable, bi-directional radio transceivers. Most units have a half-duplex (only one party can receive or transmit at a time) channel and a push-to-talk switch that starts transmission. Most newer models look like a cellular telephone handset with an antenna sticking out of the top.

The advantages to having a radio with you are many. By maintaining constant communications, you can talk to members who are straggling behind your group without yelling or turning back and others can ask you to hold up if something has gone wrong. You can also notify basecamp that you are on your way in at the end of a day of searching.


Hand-held radio range can vary depending upon the radio. There are low and high power models. Even a powerful commercial walkie-talkie is limited to a few watts of power output and a small antenna (the physical size of the device limits both battery capacity and antenna size). Hand-held communication range is typically quite short, not exceeding the line-of-sight distance to the horizon in the open, and even less in built-up areas, within buildings, or underground. Many radio services permit the use of a repeater which is located at some high point within the desired coverage area. The repeater listens on one frequency and retransmits on another, so that reliable hand-held to hand-held unit range can be extended to a few score miles (kilometers) or further, using repeaters linked together.

The hand-held radio has now become popular with the new U.S. Family Radio Service (FRS) and similar unlicensed services in other countries. FRS hand held radios have proper super heterodyne receivers and are a useful communication tool for Bigfoot hunting. Operation in the Family Radio Service is restricted to hand held radios limited to 500 milliwatts of effective RF power. Some FRS models also include the surrounding General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) channels, which require a license.

When shopping for a radio, you will want one that is durable and dependable.You may also want to consider purchasing models that allow a headset, leaving your hands free to move branches out of the way, hold a walking stick, or climb rocks. Another feature to look for is VOX or voice operated transmission switch which detects your voice when you speak so that you don't have to keep keying the radio to talk.