Passes & Canyons Blog

Hearing that I had tried out the UCLEAR HBC 100 Moto helmet communicator and loved it, my friend Patty Davis, National Motorcycle Travel Examiner, remarked that she still preferred her CB helmet communicator because it has greater range and as many people as have them can be on the same conversation. The range with the HBC 100 is about a tenth of a mile and only two riders can be in communication.

Those are certainly valid arguments. It’s also something I discussed with Kelly Kern, my co-tester, when we put the HBC 100 through the paces. And for starters, let me just say that Kelly and I both loved the HBC 100.

Kelly does a lot of group riding and she made note that a lot of people on these rides do use CB systems. She also noted that they are a lot more expensive. We didn’t discuss, but a bit of searching suggests to me, that CB systems generally come with boom microphones. A boom, in case you’re unclear, is one of those arms that sticks out from the unit and needs to be positioned in front of your mouth.

Judy and I have used a boom microphone communicator and we found the boom to be a big pain in the butt. We had to be sure it was properly positioned each time and for me that meant that much of the time I actually rode along with it grasped lightly between my lips the whole time. The HBC 100 has microphones built into the speakers, which are placed inside the helmet by your ears. The mics pick up your voice when you speak, plain and simple. And the clarity is vastly superior to our old system, which, by the way, just up and quit working a couple years ago.

I totally understand Patty’s interest in having multiple people in on the conversation. In my review of the HBC 100 on Examiner.com I made the point that if I was a honcho at UCLEAR it would be my top priority to make that available on my next product upgrade. And if that is a top priority for you then you probably need to look at a different product.

For Judy and me, however, our interest is in rider to passenger communication. In that case, range is immaterial, since she’s sitting right behind me. Having more than two on the conversation is immaterial, because we just want to talk to each other. And meanwhile, not having a boom, not having to make some sound to activate the voice-activation, having crystal clear sound quality–all of these things are huge for us. With the units installed, all we have to do is put on our helmets, turn the units on, and talk. Just talk. Nothing more. Add to that the fact that the HBC 100 is affordable at $200 for one unit and another $50 for an accessory pack that lets you connect two helmets, and there’s just no reason we would even look at anything else.

So as with any purchase, it really depends on what you need. If what you need fits with what the HBC 100 offers, I would strongly urge you to check it out. There may be comparable units on the market, I don’t know. But this is one unit I now have some familiarity with and I like it. A lot.

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Product test: Big thumbs up on UCLEAR HBC 100 Moto helmet communicator

Biker Quote for Today

The “better” rider waves first.

I was first out of bed on Saturday and when I saw how the wind was blasting I started reconsidering doing the Last Brass Monkey Run. Then when Judy got up, her first words were “I’m not going with you on the Last Brass Monkey Run.”

I had already decided not to ride when I got an email from Alan Baumbach that he sent to several people saying he wasn’t going to ride in this wind. Said he lost a friend a while back due to a crash presumably related to strong winds. So I guess I wasn’t the only one.

Still later I heard from other people who did ride, and did do the run, and they said it wasn’t all that bad. Good for you guys, I was still glad not to be out in that.

By Sunday the wind had died down and I was ready to ride. It was cold, only around 33 degrees, but we’ve got electric vests and other warm clothes. Besides, I had finally received the second UCLEAR HBC 100 Moto helmet communicator and I got them installed in our helmets. We wanted to take a ride and test them.

As I mentioned before, these communicators do a lot more than let the rider and passenger talk. They also connect with your cell phone, your GPS, or your iPod. I’ll be testing all those things later, but on Sunday we were just trying out the rider to passenger communication. And really, we need to do a lot more testing than we did. We didn’t stay out too long because it was cold and our fingers were really feeling it after not too long.

So just from what we found, these communicators are pretty sweet. They installed pretty easily and they work very well. There’s no boom in front of your mouth and yet they pick up your speech very nicely. The sound coming out of the speakers is amazingly clear. We just rode and talked. That was it. It was that simple.

Now, we did have a little trouble coming through at higher speeds, and that’s one of the things we want to play with. The units are supposed to automatically compensate for higher and lower levels of noise, but we had manually turned them down before we took off. Around home we were getting a lot of random noise and that was less annoying with the volume turned down. Once we got out on the road, however, that noise went away entirely. I suspect it’s a lot of stray signals from other devices on or near that same frequency. Get away from population and you get away from the noise.

So this is just an interim report. Now in the next few days, which are supposed to be very nice, I’m hoping to get together with someone who has a bluetooth-enabled cell phone to try out the other features on these communicators. Once that happens I’ll have more to tell you.

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Motorcycle year in pictures 2011

Biker Quote for Today

Whatever it is, it’s better in the wind…

Judy and I have been in the market for awhile now for a new helmet-to-helmet communicator, ever since our last one just stopped working for unknown reasons. I can’t say we were ever thrilled with how it worked, but at least we could talk as we rode. And just FYI, that was a Collett Electronics model.

One thing stopping us from buying a new communicator was that we hated the idea of spending a bunch of money on something sight-unseen. We had learned something of the pros and cons of communicators from using our Collett and now we were more selective.

You can well imagine then that I was particularly pleased to be contacted last week by a rep from a company producing communicators asking me if I would like to do a demo of their latest device and write about it. Don’t throw me in that briar patch, right?

The company is UCLEAR, and the product is the HCB100. The company claims this is all military-grade technology, which is to say, very good. I particularly like the fact that the voice pick-up is not a boom, or some microphone that sticks out in front of your mouth. The device apparently just clips to the side of your helmet and is good enough to pick up your voice as you speak.

Now, I say apparently because I don’t have the device yet. This thing has the ability to connect to your bluetooth-enabled cellphone, to your GPS unit, and I’m not sure what else. I told the rep that neither my wife nor I have a bluetooth-enabled cellphone and he didn’t seem to feel it would be worth their while to have me do the test if I wasn’t going to be able to test its full capabilities.

No problem, I figured, I’d ask around and see which of my riding friends have bluetooth-enabled cell phones. Well, it turns out that apparently none of them do. Fortunately, while Alan does not have one himself, he knows someone who does, and he sent me an email with contact info for his friend. I sent an email but haven’t heard back yet, but I presume this will work out.

So anyway, maybe soon I’ll have that nailed down and UCLEAR will be sending me one of their units. And of course I’ll be right back here telling you all about it. And heck, I don’t even care about the bluetooth capabilities. As long as it works well as a communicator for Judy and me, I’m thinking we’re going to be buying this thing rather than be sending it back after the test.

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Biker Quote for Today

I am taking the advice of all those people who told me, “Hey kid, why don’t you go play in traffic!”