How to Get Two Different Walkie-Talkies to Communicate With Each Other
If you have one type of walkie-talkie and your friend has another, you may wonder how to get them to communicate with one another. While many people think that two different walkie-talkie brands won't work together, these simple steps will show you how to get them to "talk."
- Set your walkie-talkies to the same channel. If they won't communicate with one another, then move on to the next step.
- If your walkie-talkies won't communicate on the same channel, check for CCTCSS (or Continuous Tone Coded Squelch System) blocking. If you have CCTCSS activated, it sends a tone along with your voice when you speak. This isn't detectable by a person, but it is detected by the receiving radio. If the tone that is detected isn't the tone that the accepting walkie-talkie is "told" to accept, however, it won't let the message through; this is why some messages won't come through from other brands of devices. To fix this, simply switch off the CCTCSS functions on your walkie-talkies.
- Another type of signaling is DCS, or Digital Coded Squelch. This is similar to CCTCSS, but instead of sending a tone, it sends a digital code. If your radios still won't communicate with one another, they may have DCS codes that aren't compatible. Simply turn the DCS feature off and they may start to work together.
- Depending on if your radio works with FRS or GMRS frequencies, the channel numbers may be different. You may think that your radios are on the same channel, when actually channel 1 on one radio is channel 8 on the other. If this is the case, you'll want to look up the channels and their corresponding channel numbers on the other type of frequency.