Passes & Canyons Blog

This new Hawk helmet with the front flipped up. And hey, it has built-in Bluetooth communication.

Seems like every day is Christmas lately, and I have a lot of near gear to try out. In addition to the new heated gloves I’ve been writing about, I also just received a new helmet. The full name of this helmet is Hawk H-6607 Glossy Black Dual-Visor Modular Motorcycle Helmet with Bluetooth. OK, that’s a mouthful. Let’s break it down.

First off, it’s a modular, flip-up type of helmet. I’ve never used one of those before so that’s something to get familiar with. It’s also dual-visor, which is to say that it has a separate flip-down sun visor to use during the daylight and to flip up at night. And third, it has built-in bluetooth. I like that idea.

So I rode to work on Wednesday and had another chance to try out this new stuff. Wednesday was a beautiful, warm day to ride so once again it wasn’t much of a test of the heated gloves but it was an incremental advancement. This time I set both gloves to 75 percent power and that was probably more than I needed. Then on my way home the right glove, which I had been running at higher power the previous times I had worn them, ran out of juice. And as I pulled into the driveway the left glove was flashing to indicate it was about to go kaput, too. So I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that when Gerbing says 2 hours on full power that truly does mean you’re not going to get more than 2 hours.

For the helmet it was my second test run. On Sunday I had gone out with it and had been surprised how noisy it was. One person I spoke with said that modulars are always noisier than regular helmets so I guess I need to factor that in. Plus, when I wore earplugs it was no problem at all. Beyond that, it is comfortable and doesn’t seem to take the breaking in that other helmets I’ve had have required.

The tinted visor needs some tweaking. It doesn’t want to stay up. When it insisted on falling down on Sunday afternoon that was no problem, but coming home Wednesday evening after dark I didn’t want that happening. Fortunately, it seemed that because I left the visor open a bit because it was so warm, that stopped it from falling except just once. I may just stick a little piece of tape on there or something, just to add a wee bit more friction.

I like that this helmet has a little chin shield that closes up the forward bottom portion of the helmet, blocking drafts. That will be nice in very cold weather.

I haven’t had a chance yet to try out the Bluetooth communicator. Maybe we can get out this weekend with Judy using our other Bluetooth communicator and see how that goes. And my experience up to now is that these communicators do work fine even if you have earplugs in. In the meantime, not to have to hassle with keeping the speaker/mic in place should be wonderful. I think built-in communicators is likely to become just standard equipment in a lot of helmets from now on. It makes so much sense.

So I’ve got a lot more testing to do on both these items, but there’s no hurry. In the meantime, a couple other packages arrived in the last couple days as well, so I may be giving my impression of some motocross gear–provided I have a decent chance to try it out. Which may not happen soon. It is December, you know. We’ll see.

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Biker Quote for Today

It’s better to ride a boring bike than push an interesting one.