Importance of walkie talkies

I have always loved walkie talkies. When I was small, I had a hard time finding people who shared my enthusiasm and was known to hold two walkie talkies, one in each hand.

This week I helped to organize first year orientation and have found walkie talkies to be the best form of communication - better than group texts and phone calls. Poor signal strength can wreak havoc. Sometimes this is because of the building itself and other times this is because there are too many mobile phones in the same place.

Some quick tips:

• Don't use channel 1 or you'll suffer from noise pollution from other walkie talkie owners that you don't know.
• Explicitly acknowledge receipt of messages. It may sound silly, but "roger that" is extremely useful.
• Learn the phonetic alphabet. There's nothing worse than having to repeat yourself.