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Walkie-talkies (also known as HTs or "handheld transceivers") are widely used among amateur radiooperators. While converted commercial gear by companies such as Motorola are not uncommon, many companies such as Yaesu, Icom, and Kenwood design models specifically for amateur use. While superficially similar to commercial and personal units (including such things as CTCSS and DCS squelch functions, used primarily to activate amateur radio repeaters), amateur gear usually has a number of features that are not common to other gear, including:
- Wide-band receivers, often including radio scanner functionality, for listening to non-amateur radio bands.
- Multiple bands; while some operate only on specific bands such as 2 meters or 70 cm, others support several UHF and VHF amateur allocations available to the user.
- Since amateur allocations usually are not channelized, the user can dial in any frequency desired in the authorized band.
- Multiple modulation schemes: a few amateur HTs may allow modulation modes other than FM, includingAM, SSB, and CW,[6][7] and digital modes such as radioteletype or PSK31. Some may have TNCs built in to support packet radio data transmission without additional hardware.
A newer addition to the Amateur Radio service is Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio or D-STAR. Handheld radios with this technology have several advanced features, including narrower bandwidth, simultaneous voice and messaging, GPS position reporting, and callsign routed radio calls over a wide ranging international network.
