My wife and I used a Radio Shack walkie-talkie with vox in the pre-FRS days. On the boat
we had then, a Nonsuch, it was a bit hard to communicate between helm and bow. It was
nice for a year or so as we worked out anchoring techniques, but after that we found
handsignals easier.

-jeff



"NavNut" wrote in message
...
Thanks Howard. I can't find full duplex radios at radioshack.com, and am a
bit leery of VOX. There's an interesting full duplex product at eartec.com.

Love to hear from more boaters who've actually used VOX headsets on board.


I'm confused. Is there a way to do truly "hands free" communications
around
a boat, or are those "hands free" headsets a bit of misnomer -- i.e. you
have to push a button to talk?

Yes (see other answers) it's called "VOX" (Voice Operated Transmit) not
"full duplex" but it's oft more PIA than not. Noise triggers it and you
can't hear while transmitting. True "full duplex" overcomes this by
using one frequency for transmit and another for recieve. It's
considered only a tad more discourtious than shouting.

73, Howard