Archer Space Patrol Walkie Talkies

[tj20]

In 'Back to the Future part 2' Marty and Doc use those radio's in the 50's. I figure they were like mine in the 80's that used 49mhz and could not transmit but 2 feet, how did they get >2 miles lol. Would they be interfering with anybody back in the 50's like the police? Just a random though on a Friday.

 

[mmckenna]

Ha! I remember wanting a set of those when I was a kid....
Back in the 50's there was a lot of stuff on the VHF low band, but I don't know the history of the 49MHz band to know if anyone else was displaced when it was created.

 

[WB4CS]

You know, this topic brings up an old memory

I was a kid when BTTF2 came out, and when I was a younger kid I had a set of those Space Patrol walkie-talkies. IIRC those were the ones that didn't have a squelch circuit so when you turned them on you heard static until the other unit transmitted. That was annoying and lead me to not use them very much, or should I say, it was annoying to my mother and she took them away from me

When I watched BTTF2 and they were using the walkie-talkies I remember being pissed that theirs didn't have all that static when they weren't talking. It just wasn't fair! I think that was the beginning of my obsession with catching movie mistakes. Which I might add, is one of those little annoying quirks my girlfriend just "loves to hate" about me, almost every movie we watch I point out mistakes.

Anyway, I realize it's just a movie and the incorrect portrayal of the radios is not important to the movie plot. However, one could argue that maybe Doc Brown picked up a set of FRS radios in the 21st century and they just happen to look like Archer Space Patrol radios. Maybe in some alternate universe Radio Shack makes FRS radios under the label "Archer"? Great Scott!

 

[Jimru]

Wow, I had a set of those in the late Sixties or early Seventies, I can't really recall.

They were fun for awhile, until my brother and I let the batteries sit in them unused for a good while. The batteries leaked all over the place and that was that!

 

[ecps92]

CB, I think it was Ch.14 aka 27 mhz aka 11 meters

Gotta laugh at the original boxes "Fully Wired"
and I thought they were wireless :evil:

Ha! I remember wanting a set of those when I was a kid....
Back in the 50's there was a lot of stuff on the VHF low band, but I don't know the history of the 49MHz band to know if anyone else was displaced when it was created.

 

[KB7MIB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; U; en-US) Gecko/20081217 Vision-Browser/8.1 301x200 LG VN530)

Yea, they would have been on either CB channel 14 (what year did CB radio go "live"?), or one of the 49MHz channels. And they didn't really get 2 miles out of them, that was just Hollywood "magic"

 

[W2PMX]

Up until September 1958, they would have been on 465MHz, and "portable" units would have weighed a few pounds (Vocaline JRC-400). After that, they could have been 27MHz walkie talkies, but the ones available in those years wouldn't get more than 200 yards - if you were lucky.

The ones in the movie were Hollywood radios - they were whatever the script needed, whether they would have existed or not (which they wouldn't have).