Here's the communicator we ended up with.

If you head out on your motorcycle two-up with your significant other it’s inevitable that at some point you will look into helmet-to-helmet communicators. The alternative is to continue to yell and try to be heard over the sound of the engine, and to frequently crack your helmets together in the process. You know, the way you’re doing it now.

A number of years ago my wife, Judy, and I took the plunge and bought a communicator system and I would have to say the results were decidedly so-so. Here’s our story.

The unit we selected was probably a mistake from the start. If all you want to do is communicate with your passenger, a simple wired system is all you need. I made the mistaken assumption that as my riding buddies and I continued to enhance our gear, some of them would also buy communicators and so it was only logical for me to get a wireless system. Of course, they would have to get the same brand product I had, but I figured that I’d set the precedent and they would follow.

A doxen years on and guess what? Not one of my friends has bought a communicator, except for John, who got one to talk with his wife when she’s on back. Oh well, Judy and I can still talk, and that’s the main thing, right?

Well, sort of.

Installing Speakers
Of course, the first thing I had to do when we bought our communicator was to install the hardware and speakers in our helmets. The foam padding in a helmet already has a cavity where your ears are so they’ll be comfortable, but if you’re going to put a speaker there you have to cut away more of the foam to make room. Our came with some glue and Velcro (or hook and loop as the generic term goes) so I then stuck the Velcro on the back of the speaker and attached it to the helmet. No problem. Except that as soon as the weather turned warm the glue melted and the speakers fell out. Jerry-rigging my way along I finally came up with an approach that held them in place, most of the time.

Initially, the system worked pretty well. We could talk and hear each other, although with voice-activation we found it worked best to start any statement with “Ummmm” to kick the voice-activation on. Of course, this was happening over the airwaves and we weren’t always the only ones using this particular frequency. If we rode along under or beside high-voltage power lines we would usually get a loud, unpleasant humming, which we would try to cancel out by loudly singing, “La la la la la la la la la la la la la.”

Other times we would pick up someone else’s cell phone conversation: “. . . Roger’s coming over at 3 then I need to . . .”
OK, fine. Judy and I can still talk, and that’s the main thing, right?

No, We Can’t
And then there came the day when we couldn’t talk. We were suited up to ride, the bike was warming up, and we connected all the wires. We did our usual tests to make sure we could hear each other, and I could hear her but she couldn’t hear me. I adjusted my microphone, we twisted all the knobs and pushed all the buttons, but nothing doing. So we took off and figured we’d mess with it when we got home.

The trouble was, we couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Next time we went for a ride we geared up again and tried the communicator and once again we couldn’t get it to work. Over the next year I fiddled with the thing again and again, all with no success. So we’re back to yelling and cracking helmets together.

Meanwhile I had been reading on motorcycle forums about different helmet-to-helmet systems and what I learned is that if all you want is communication from one helmet to another, seated on the same bike, the simple wired systems actually work quite well. They are not voice-activated; they’re just always on. The unit acts as a small amplifier, connecting the microphones in both headsets to the speakers in both headsets. They work even better if you use earplugs, and that eliminates the hassle of installing the speakers.

In other words, this is the sort of system we would have bought if I hadn’t had that silly notion of my buddies getting communicators, too. So did I got out and buy one of those?

No, I got an email asking if I’d like to try out a bluetooth communicator. Of course I had to have two to actually test them so they sent two. And they work great. That’s what we use now. I won’t rehash what I wrote about them at the time; you can see that here. Suffice it to say that Judy and I never have trouble talking on bike rides any more.

Biker Quote for Today

I went somewhere once and came back. It was kind of fun. I just might do it again.