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!mojophil@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