Yeah, I can reply with an answer. Welcome to phony advertising. They have been saying this about walkie-talkies since I was a kid, i.e. exaggerate the mileage. The fantastic range is under ideal conditions such as from mast-to-mast of a ship over seawater with no obstructions (maybe even outer space LOL). In fact, radio propagation (which I studied formulas until I was weary) is difficult to predict. There are ground waves, line of sight, sky waves, reflected waves, all which affect range. I assume your talkies (as most are today) are higher frequency which is more line-of-sight like cell phone (think light) so if there's an obstacle or simple hill in the way it shadows your communication. The lower frequency AM radios waves travel more along the ground. A line-of-sight and reflected wave cancel each other and even powerful stations would not go far if it was not for earth conductivity. Medium short wave radio transmission use more of the sky wave bouncing off the atmosphere. This makes local (line-of-sight or ground wave) reception strong, and then it fades out until it bounces back down far away. So you have primary reception, none further out, and then hundreds of miles away good, secondary reception. FM frequencies and higher's range is CRUDELY approximated by the forth root of the watt power and square root of the antenna height above average horizon. In short, you need 16 rimes the power to go twice the distance. And again, if you lift your antenna higher by 4 times, you will get twice the range. This works to a point where it then levels off to something called the inverse square law that predicts field intensity in free space (e.g. 100 milliwatts have 250 microvolts/meter at 5 miles so you can't go beyond that.) And this is why a 10 watt FM station may go clear 10-15 miles and 50,000 watt you have trouble after 50-60 miles. The curvature of the earth gets in the way. and higher power stations need towers to broadcast. Hope that helps but the bottom line is your walkie-talkies are normal. It's the sales pitch that is not.