Road Trips and young kids with radios

[hxpx]

Went on a road trip and my 6 year old rode with grandma. I gave him one of my radios and we kept the other. Thought it'd be a fun way to try to talk. In the 20-ish hours of driving:

• Kid turned off his radio "to save battery"
• Kid turned off his radio because he wanted to watch Minecraft videos on the iPad
• Kid dropped the radio and couldn't reach it
• Kid couldn't hear his radio over his headphones while watching a movie on the iPad
• Kid said "hi dad, I love you" and a construction worker on the same frequency responded "what?" and my kid went "what?" and the construction worker went "what?" and my kid panicked turned off the radio when he realized he wasn't talking to dad
• We talked about how big windmills actually are when we passed a blade being transported

All in all, a fun experiment. He enjoyed using "dad's radios" and getting to use walkie-talkies somewhere other than the backyard (when it was turned on).

Also, sorry, random Illinois DOT guy.

[WSHH887]

Geesh.  All we ever did was play punch bug, and Outta State to see who could see the most out of state plates.  No radios needed.  All we did was holler from the back of the '57 Chevy station wagon to the front.  Then again radios would have made communication easier at those long distances.

[dosw]

100%, grandma kept telling him to turn it off to save the battery whenever he wasn't using it. Kids left to their own aren't going to be thinking those invasive thoughts; they'll leave it on in their sock drawer for six months, or until years later when you clean out their room after they moved away to college (whichever comes later).

[hxpx]

7 hours ago, WSHH887 said:

Geesh.  All we ever did was play punch bug, and Outta State to see who could see the most out of state plates.  No radios needed.  All we did was holler from the back of the '57 Chevy station wagon to the front.  Then again radios would have made communication easier at those long distances.

Kind of hard to holler from one vehicle to another. Not saying it can't be done, just... difficult.

6 hours ago, dosw said:

100%, grandma kept telling him to turn it off to save the battery whenever he wasn't using it. Kids left to their own aren't going to be thinking those invasive thoughts; they'll leave it on in their sock drawer for six months, or until years later when you clean out their room after they moved away to college (whichever comes later).

The in-laws have handheld CB radios and my wife grew up with a CB radio in the car on long road trips. They usually give him a radio when we have to take two cars on a trip, but my father in law is out on a railcar trip with the CB radios, which is why we used mine and why my kid was the only one handling the radio. Grandma couldn't reach it when he dropped it.

I don't think it's "invasive thoughts", I think he's trying to follow the "when you're done with something, shut it off and put it away before moving onto the next thing" rule. Which is great, except he keeps forgetting the rule doesn't apply to radios. (He's done this at home, too.)

[LeoG]

No young kids on our trip this time.  We traveled with the grandkids up to my sons house but we were by ourselves to bring the kids back and it was his birthday so we had the party to go to.  My sister and other son came up the next day and we did the party and then stayed another night.

Traveled home and I gave my brother a radio.  They had to stop for gas and we didn't so lost them relatively quickly, it's hilly on the NY thruway.  Kept trying as we hoped they were catching up and eventually we hit a slow down and they got about 1.5 miles away according to the mile markers and we could communicate with a pair of Tidradio H3s.  I have a Nagoya 771G antenna and his radio had a Smiley Rubber Duck antenna.  I could hear him before he could hear me before we got in range.

All in all it was helpful besides just talking.  He had a statey come up and warned us, so it was nice having that heads up.  And on several occasions when we had slow downs we were able to give them heads up and tell them which lane was the best to be in.  At one time they actually got ahead of us for a short bit during one of the slow downs.  That didn't last very long.

There was also a repeater I had found on the way up.  I was just playing around with the repeaters I had programmed in and when I keyed up the Long Island East End repeater I could see the response on the LCD panel but no sound.  I removed the Rx tone and I had access.

On our way back we used that briefly but had better luck just using my repeater frequencies with me in talk around and him in normal

All in all it was a good experience and helpful and I'm glad I gave them the radio.