Can you hear me now?

This morning Kendall walked in one direction, I ran in a different direction, and we both carried our new talkabouts. They almost worked!

Kendall set off before I did and I tried hailing him just as I was leaving. No response.
He tried hailing me from the furthest point on his route. No response.
I tried hailing him when I got up on a highway overpass and could point myself toward where I thought he might be. Fuzzy response. I was at least able to recognize his voice!
He tried hailing me just as I was reaching the top of another overpass and we could understand at least half of what the other person said.
He hailed me again when we were about a mile apart and everything was loud and clear. (When he asked me where I was I replied with "on Eutaw or Lipan or one of those streets" and someone from somewhere hollered out "Lipan" - those talkabout beeps get everyone's attention!)

We met up and walked together for a bit then I took off running while he went back to the house. He tried hailing me from within the house when I was less than a mile away and it didn't work very well at all - but we played with our settings (me with both cell phone and talkabout in hand as we worked out the adjustments - running is not supposed to be so gadgety) and got so we could sort of tell what the other person was saying (he heard me pretty well, I had a harder time but was dealing with a lot of traffic noise at the time).

I figure that
a) with experience, we'll get the settings right for the distances we're dealing with
and
b) where the talkabouts don't work (lots of buildings), the cell phones will work, and where the cell phones don't work (countryside, farmland, ...) the talkabouts will work.

And if neither work - I got myself the world's loudest whistle today. I tried it out as we were driving home. Note to self: never ever blow that whistle inside any sort of enclosure. Yow!