Re: [ST] communications and loud fuel pumps

[Bil Swartz <bil@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Heya Eric, congrats to Rachel on getting her own bike! 

I have a wife that rides too, and can't emphasize how important bike to
bike comms is for us.  We also have several folks we ride with that use
radio too so that makes for more fun when we get together.

I've prolly been noodling with radios for 5 years or so now, and our best
experience for range, sound quality, and value was the Chatterbox CB-27A
setups that unfortunately were discontinued a while back.  They had remote
controls that mounted to the left bar so you could change channels,
push-to-talk (PTT), adjust volume and most importantly with CB-adjust the
squelch.  With the small external antennas included in the kit that had
been SWR tuned we'd get 2-3 miles easy, and sometimes I had longer
reports.

However we wanted to get away from antennas, power and antenna leads, etc.
and get away from the noise of cb.  So when FRS first came out I bought a
pair of quality Kenwoods to try.  There weren't any decent headsets that
were in my opinion affordable so we tried cobbling some up with limited
success.  And the way J&M does business with suing other people out of
existence whether or not they actually had a copyright issue, it would be
a cold day in hell before I ever spend any money with them.  Seems the FRS
don't have the volume to be heard over wind noise at highway speeds, and
we too use earplugs.  Range was an issue too.  The only time I ever got
the claimed 2 miles out of FRS was on the open water.  So we waited.

With the recent flood of FRS/GMRS, increase output power (some to 3
watts!) and more headsets to try we started playing again.  I've now got a
bunch of Motocomm's products and am trying various radios with them.  

Motocomm headsets are $50 to $60, come with the headset, PTT button, and
the 3-way harness that connects the PTT, radio, and headset
together.  There are additional 3-way harnesses for $15 so you can
accomodate different radios.  Some have the ear/mic jacks separated, some
are on a single pin-word of warning, not all single pin jacks are the
same.

Right now I'm using a Cobra PR-955 rig, 2 watts of output,about $40 at
Wallyworld, and it comes with rechargable batts and a wall-wart for
charging!  Have been thru many other Cobras including their 3-watt feature
laden models but they don't work as well so far nor come with
batts/charger.  The other nice thing is the PR-955 has the split ear/mic
jacks, same config as most CB hand helds, so that same cable jacks right
into the cb if I wanna change and talk to truckers, etc.  My home-rolled
cb kit gets out better than the Chatterbox did, but without that remote
feature is kinda painful to use.

So for about $100/ea you can get set up and it works acceptably.  We put
the radios in the tank bag to get 'em away from our bodies but I'm sure
the other factors there hurt too.  You might try setting it upright,
sticking the antenna out, etc.  Some "pro" FRS/GMRS combos have detachable
antennas, so someday I'll try sticking the antenne out on the tankbag or
windscreen, etc.

Autocom products seem to work well, liSTer Lapoint uses those with
professional GMRS radios and they sound good and have great range but man
the price! The folks that make the MotoComm stuff, Magnum LTD, are working
on better speakers for music, I might try to see if we get better (louder)
output.  I think right now they use 16-32 ohm speakers, I'm gonna try some
good 8-ohm speakers if I can find some which should boost the level just
enough.  And I'm planning a web page to share all these experiences
someday.

FWIW, HIH.

- -- 

                               ._O_.  '99 SprintST -mine
           -Bil-              /_\o/_\ '98 VFR800FI -hers         /~\
"No I don't want a pickle..."   /H\   '89 Hawk GT  -ours   ASCII \ / Against
      bil@xxxxxxxxxx           (=O=)  AMA, CMH-Moto,      Ribbon  X  HTML
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