[net.cycle] Cycle-to-cycle comm

mojo@kepler.UUCP (05/03/86)

I read an ad in a recent "Rider" for Nady Corp. communications gear,
driver-to-passenger and cycle-to-cycle intercoms and radios.  The
radios intrigued me for riding along in the mountains with someone
else.

Anyone had experience with these or similar equipment?

-- 
Mojo
... Morris Jones, MicroPro Product Development
{lll-crg,ptsfa,dual,well,pyramid}!micropro!kepler!mojo

phil@portal.UUcp (Phil Sih) (05/05/86)

In article <613@kepler.UUCP>, mojo@kepler.UUCP (Morris Jones) writes:
> I read an ad in a recent "Rider" for Nady Corp. communications gear,
> driver-to-passenger and cycle-to-cycle intercoms and radios.  The
> radios intrigued me for riding along in the mountains with someone
> else.
> Anyone had experience with these or similar equipment?

When I used to work at HP and had a lot of riding friends (about 12
bikes all together) we set up a radio net on our bikes for long trips.
At that time I did quite extensive experimentation with various radios
some of which were similar to the Nady rigs you mentioned.  Although
I never tested that particluar brand, I did test some similar, 49Mhz,
FM radios, and perhaps some of what I found out might help you.

The 49Mhz FM (49FM) radios are really low power (<100mw) and have a range
of less than .25 mile under ideal conditions. (Line of sight, no noise)
This allowed an effective range on a motor of only about half that, given
the fact that your signal-to-noise was significantly reduced by non-radio
kinds of noises.  This range turned out to be unacceptable for us as
.125 mile differences would crop up just going through towns.

Another difficulty was with the available volume of the low powered units.
Around town at low speeds this wasn't a problem, but on the highway where
we spent 90% of our time the wind noise made the rather low audio level
unacceptable.  I think the Nady units may be better than the units I tested
(Maxxon) which had only a 3 position volume switch.

We ended up using regular car mount CB radios, slide rack mounted to the
bikes, with fiberglass, top-loaded antennas, handlebar push-to-talk
controls, and mics and walkman-style speakers in the helmets.  This
was not so good at very close range (next to a person) but the AGC of
the radios could handle anything farther apart than that. (AM radios like
CB's have this problem, FM radios don't.)  We got about 5 miles range
under typical circumstances which allowed us to do some really interesting
things li split the group and take two different routes or pass
Winnebagoes around blind curves using radio look-ahead. (That always
drew a severe diagnostic from the occupants.)

We did not have any intercom feature, although the system was designed
to accept this. The Nady and I think the Maxxon units provide this
as part of their package.

In the end we found range, audio output, and handlebar PTT operation to
be the biggest factors.

Mail if you would like to discuss this more.  BTW, we called our mobile
radio net 'deathnet' sort of as a morbid joke.

	- Phil    { sun | hoptoad | atari } !portal!phil