UKC

UK walkie talkies for mountain walking.

In the UK. In June, my son and daughter in law are walkie up mountains in The Lake District, while we are camping by the lake. I am looking at if its worth getting a set of walkie talkies for us so they can have one while walking the mountain tops and we can have one below. Can you give me any advice please, make and model and prices please.

Do they have phones? 

The Lakes is probably the one place I'd say they're not great. Ours are usually useful almost everywhere we go but just pick up taxi companies and all sorts of crap when we get up high in the lakes. And if you're down in the valley and they're up on the hills over the horizon somewhere you'll probably be out of range anyway.
What are you going to be needing to talk about? I can't imagine they'll want to be nattering on a radio all day, and knowing tea's ready won't be a ton of use if they're half a dozen Wainwrights away.

Not sure what the best answer is, but the second best is probably a fully charged phone and a power bank. No guarantees, obviously, but I get a signal most places in the lakes these days.

As for best make and model, there's been loads of threads about them on here. The search bar will find those.

I used to use walkie talkies skiing which was really hit or miss, the terrain of the hillside often obliterated any signal even if you were well with in range. Invariably we need up resorting to calling each other on phones. I tried again in North Wales a few years later doing something similar to what you are talking about and you pretty much had to be able to see the campsite to have any sort of reliable contact. 

If you already have them then maybe worth a try but I wouldn't bother getting any and use a phone instead.

There are several walkie-talkie apps around. I’ve seen one app used on a long meandering rock climb with mixed results- the best was on a pitch that climbed the inside of a stalactite riddled cave when normal voice communication didn’t work; the worst was two pitches later when the app failed and voices worked. Possibly the app but worth investigating further. 

As an 'ex professional user of such devices I can only agree with the other posters.   The frequencies these radios use is basically only going to work if your near enough in-line-of-sight with the other radio user.  So the signal  will NOT go over the hills to work with someone on the other side, you might just, if you are in a valley get someone slightly out of sight on the summit - if you are lucky.   

Use your phone.  If you've got a phone signal at your camping spot, then  in my experience the majority of hills have reasonable  mobile signals.  In effect your signal  and/or there's will relayed by the various network of phone masts in valleys, town and/or cities - even if these are miles away.  That said, I've been on plenty of hills with no signals but even then walking less than 100m slightly down slope gives the phone a better chance of picking up a phone signal.

When I worked with groups using  VHF/UHF radios I used to get them to tell me where they were (using a grid reference), every half hour or so.  This you could ask them to do and they'd only have text you which doesn't even need a reasonable signal - a poor one, or almost non existent  one will work.   This also focuses their minds on having to map read and not just wandering about without them  knowing exactly where they are.