43.50MHz.

2,400MHz.

They don't look very close to me.

Nevertheless I can listen to my 2.4GHz wireless telephone on my 43.50MHz walkie talkie. These items have nothing in common except that a) they use radio frequencies to communicate, and b) they both came from Radio Shack.

I'm still trying to determine which is worse...

At 43.50MHz anyone with a radio can listen to my conversation quite happily.

At 2.4GHz it risks interfering with the 802.11b network I am providing to my housemates.

Or perhaps 802.11b really runs at 43.50MHz too, and maybe I can listen to network traffic on my walkie talkie as well.

After all, I got my 802.11b nic at Radio Shack, too, and it does use radio frequency to communicate...

If that is the case, then perhaps I can learn to make ticking sounds into my walkie talkie and simulate network traffic.

It wouldn't be very fast though. I'd have to pretend I was at the outermost point of signal with my access point. I'd also have to learn the protocol...

Or maybe my walkie talkie really runs at 2.4GHz. But it says on it "43.30MHz-43.70MHz" and has five channels. My phone talks on channel C (well, sometimes. Once it showed up on channel B - 43.40MHz.)

Sometimes I can't hear my phone on the radio at all. I think that it spends that time interfering with my wireless network.

Incidentally my wireless network also seems to be interfered with by ... well ... me.

See, my access point is upstairs, and I have a nic plugged into an ancient ISA PCMCIA adapter sticking out of the drive bays in the front of the firewall - a full tower desktop box which really doesn't look like it should have PCMCIA cards in it. (This computer did not come from Radio Shack, however it does seem to broadcast on a very large number of frequencies, interfering with the walkie talkies, phone, shortwave radio, television, and just about anything else that dare attempt to use radio frequencies near it.)

That's fine and good and all, but if I stand up, I get between the nic and the access point, and that's just enough to block the signal and kill the connection.

Ah well. Some things just never seem to go the way you want them to.