Hands free 2 way radio

[G50AE]

...there are plenty of FMRS radios out there that will fit your bill...

There are no such things as FMRS radios. There is Family Radio Service (FRS) and Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS), both of which are licence free services.

[BigSlick]

The FRS (UHF) radios are fine for short unsecured communication but as a ham radio operator I can honestly tell you that the ranges many of them boast are pure fantasy. Expect no more than 3 to 5 miles under ideal conditions (line of sight). The antennas on those radios are not worth a crap. The three most important things in radio communications are antenna, antenna, antenna. The so called private channel is nothing more than a coded squelch which does not prevent a third party from hearing you. It will block others from communicating with you unless they are using the same private channel.

If you are wanting to get the most bang out of a walkie-talkie, try any business band (star/dot) VHF or UHF radio that has a removable antenna. There are some units out there that use a BNC antenna connection. Using a small 1/4 wave magnetic mount antenna which is about 14 inches or so for VHF or 5 inches for UHF works wonders. With a one watt radio you can realistically achieve 10 to 15 miles. Still there are better antennas and you could move up to. The FCC has recently relaxed (removed) the registering fee for certain itinerant frequency/channels mostly because people did not register them anyway and with 10's of thousands low power radios sold policing the airwaves became almost impossible. The upside with these radios are they are cheap and has good range if one desired it.

If you want a more secure two-way radio I suggest looking into the TriSquare brand radios. These radios are encrypted and have many counter measures such as random frequency hopping to prevent eavesdropping in case the encryption is cracked. They also operate in the 900 MHZ band (eXRS) and feature 1,000 digital channels. The downside is they still have crap for an antenna but do work better than the FRS radios with stock antennas but still the range is less than 5 miles.