Nearly every outdoor outing can be made more fun with the addition of some walkie-talkies. We have had a few for years, and just recently added a few more to spread among our growing number of interested children.

We wanted to get new radios that worked well with our previous ones, so we made sure to get ones that are FRS compatible. Mostly based on price, we bought a few Motorola MH230R radios. After using them on most of our recent adventures, we love these new radios. In fact, we’ll be ordering a few more shortly.

Most of the Motorola FRS radios come with a rechargeable battery, and you can either use the rechargeable battery pack, or standard batteries. These new radios we bought use three AAA batteries in place of the battery pack. When you have the battery back in place, you can even charge these radios with a standard mini USB cable. FRS radios allow you to select one of several channels, and also one of a number of ‘security codes’ which help filter out any other users of the same frequencies.

Our kids love playing with the radios, and we get the added bonus of being able to talk to the kids while they are exploring and running ahead on our hikes. Might I pass along a few things I’ve learned about kids and radios:

1. Teach them to hold the radio away from their mouth when they talk. We frequently remind them “don’t eat the radio!”
2. Teach them to hold down the button while they talk. Then release it, and give others a chance to respond.
3. Teach them to keep the radio on, until the adventure is over. A radio that is off

Give a few radios a try, and you may find they add more to an adventure then you expected!