A friend of mine who I have known for almost 40 years got in the habit of listening to walkie-talkie frequencies on Christmas morning many years ago, long before I met him. He thought it was fun to listen to the little tykes blabbering on CB Channel 14, then 49 MHz. and more recently on FRS channels thru the years.
I started doing the same one year after hearing him talk about it and I have to admit that, sort of like listening to McDonald's order windows (Anyone remember 35.02/154.570?), it is inexplicitly fun to eavesdrop. Well, for a while anyway.
This takes us into the realm of history. In the beginning man created CB radio. He gave his hard-earned money and got in return great tidings of joy. Well, actually he got cheap walkie talkies on CB Channel 14. Back in the late 1960's and well into the 1980's Channel 14 on 27.125 MHz AM was the go-to channel for the cheap, single channel walkie-talkies of the day, mostly purchased at Radio Shack. Radio Shack (back when it was still 2 words) had a store in every town of over 30 people it seemed, and 2 in every large mall. They were ubiquitous around the USA and back then actually sold radios. Of course, this was back before the days of "You have questions, we have blank stares".
For some reason Channel 14 was chosen to be the common channel for these walkie-talkies. I don't know why this channel was chosen over any other, but it was a good idea for the consumer that there was a fairly common channel. This allowed one to buy any of many different models of radios and they would all talk to each other. Interoperability at its best!
Radio Shack sold many different radios with Channel 14 in them. They had the "Space Patrol" line geared towards kids. Some of these had "Morse Code" buttons, basically a big red button that sent an audio tone out over the channel. This was used mostly to annoy any of the adults listening in. They even had a CB base station meant for kids, this had a Channel 14 transmit crystal and a tuner that allowed you to listen in on the whole CB band. Good luck on tuning in on Channel 14 to actually listen to your buddy though, they were notoriously inept at remaining on the receive frequency. When I was a kid, we all had these in the neighborhood and even connected them to our home's TV antennas for greater range. That worked great except when Dad was watching Lawrence Welk or Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, and the picture got all fuzzy and kid's voices scrambled old Marlin Perkins as he stalked the Serengeti for the elusive lion/parakeet hybrid.
Later the 49 MHz. band was opened to "personal communicators" and a new crop of kid-friendly radios were introduced. These were often smaller and sold in pairs. This was where I first encountered the AAAA battery, even smaller and more expensive than the AAA or AA cells. Like a bulimic super-model or Apple with the MacBook and iPhone, thinner was better, the AAAA cells made it happen.
There were other types of stuff sold that used these frequencies like baby monitors, pagers and intercom systems but what really made these frequencies awesome to listen to were cordless phones. 49.875 seemed to be the common channel for walkies if I recall correctly. The ones geared towards kids often also had the red Morse Code button on them.
The cordless phones that first appeared on the 49 MHz. band often used the 1.7 MHz. range for the base transmit, I think it was 1710 KHz. on some and 1730 on others. While these are now part of the AM Broadcast band, back then they had other uses. The first model cordless phones we had were on 1710 KHz./49 MHz. when I was a teenager. We would take the handsets out and ride our bikes until we found a dial tone then call home and tell Mom we were using a "Car Phone". This was well before Caller-ID so she had no idea where we were. Within bicycle range I was able to find a half dozen or so of these. We were what they would call "Free-range kids" these days, leaving the house after breakfast, coming home for lunch and then out all afternoon, don't be late for dinner and after dinner be home when the streetlights come on. As long as we didn't end up in the hospital or police station she didn't really care where we were.
Still later FRS radios became popular and cheap enough to be given to kids for Christmas. Sometimes they lasted past New Years before being lost, flushed or crushed. To this day they remain the radio of choice to be given to little Johnnie so he can talk to Billie across the street.
These radios weren't originally developed to be kiddie toys, they were intended first to be useful tools for the construction worker, road worker, store clerk or warehouse manager. They evolved into kid's toys as they got cheap enough to produce and sell and a new market opened up for them, for better or worse.
So, this Christmas morning listen in to the FRS channels for the kids down the street chirping and burping. It will be fun listening for at least a few minutes.
