I'm thinking of purchasing the "Ace" IHBA race receiver...  Do you guys recommend the standard ear buds or the upgraded ones.  I know when my motor is running I couldn't hear anything with my standard ear bud that came with the Motorola radio I have.  Also does the battery shutoff switch need to be wired on the positive side or negative side of the battery.  Dont want any problems with tech...  Thanks Jeff...  

Post Edited (P.C.) : 3/20/2008 2:50:13 PM GMT

hey jeff, as i mentioned before, i'd ordered the ace and standard ear buds a couple months ago.  the ace arrived, but no ears.  i'd asked nancy about the ears and she had told me back when that they were backordered.    didn't get 'em before going to fbird.

at registration, i asked her about 'em, and she tossed a set of the race ear buds at me, so that's what i got.   charley called a little drivers meeting friday morning, as a radio test and tune.   so, there i am listening away through a bunch of static, looking at charley, and all of sudden i couldn't hear anything - battery that came with it (new) was dead, so tim kelley's wife had an extra and we put it in - presto, no more static! 

from my perspective, this is one of those things where we should have been forced to do something we didn't want to do a long time ago...  the radios are awesome.  from the ramp to the barge, you could hear everything the starter transmitted, so you knew exactly what was going on, what class was ahead of you, what boats, knew who was starting when, knew when the course was about to go green...   by the time he'd ask the other guy to give a thumbs up when ready, he'd look at me and see a thumb so wouldn't even have to finish asking...   they are great, you'll love it (except for tangling in the wires, but that's a minor deal ) .  

vince, i've never used any kind of radio in the boat before, so it was all new to me.  getting the helmet on, i couldn't really tell if the buds stayed in my ears or not, or if i'd disconnected anything because i was pitted too far away to get a radio signal.  but by the time i got to the lanes, i could hear him which made me feel a bit more comfortable.  i didn't duct tape the things to my ears, but i saw a couple people doing that so maybe that's a good idea???  also, if you get a "new" radio, make sure you have a couple fresh AAA's because the one that comes with it isn't too good.

the other thing was, there are two wires, the earbud wire, then kind of an extension cord.  when i had the helmet on, it was long enough to run down to my feet.  i just put my jacket on, plugged the jack into the receiver and tucked the extra wire into one of the jacket straps.  also, i had the wire inside of my helmet restraint chest strap, so would pull up some slack before velcroing that down. i think there's a "better way", and will try some different things later.  

charley said at the radio meeting that he could hear his in his spring car, but honestly, after i started my engine i never heard anything else.  and i know startersteve was talking by the time people got to the end of the 1/4 on our last qualifying run saturday, because he was trying to speed things up a tad, but i never heard him all the way to the outramp.  and i never heard anything on the return road (couple times i didn't take my stuff off 'til i got back to the pit, or not at all), so i'm not quite sure what the range is.  

some guys thought there was too much talk, but for me, i'd rather hear more than less.  i liked what steve was doing, reminding guys to get around the corner, etc.  i liked knowing what was going on from one moment to the next, but that's just me.  i'm gettin a little hard of hearing anyway, so being able to hear everything he said was a huge improvement for me...

At first, Steve was talking before the pairs cleared the course. He hadn't been involved in these conversations prior to the race. It was explained to him why we can not do that, since some teams want to talk to their driver during the race. Also, until we figured out that there was a "talk back feature" that would change our priority channel, therefore putting our conversation on the driver's channel. This required an alteration by the dealer, which was done at a local shop on Friday, during the races.

Honestly, I was pretty skepticle about everyone using the same radio. I had it in my mind that there would be two totally different radios . After all the bugs got worked out, they performed beautifully. We could hear and talk to the starter, the starter could hear and talk to us, but the drivers could only hear the starter. There was a little repetativeness between the tower and the starter due to some interferance from another radio, which probably contributed to some excessive chatter, but that has also been resolved. I think Red Bluff will be seamless and  everyone will grow to appreciate knowing what is going on, as BP described. I know the starter appreciates having his vocal chords at the end of the day.

The driver's radios are receivers only (Ch 1). Our radios look similar to the traditional Motorola's. The "talk back" feature I was referring to, inabled us to talk back on a different channel, once the scanner picked up sombody on the another channel. Therefore, when the starter talked to us, our scanner would detect him and when we spoke back to him, the "talk back feature" would temporarily swicth our primary channel to match his (Ch 1). This resulted in the drivers hearing ours and the tower's conversations.

That feature has been disabled so that the starter talks to the drivers on one channel (Ch 1), and our scanner picks it up so we can hear him. Rescue and the Tower talk on a different channel (Ch 2), and the starter's scanner picks it up, so he can hear us. The driver's radio only receives the starter's channel (Ch 1) and I think they can add their crew's channel (Ch ?) as well.

Rescue has the ability to switch to the driver's channel (Ch 1) if necessary to talk to the driver. Is that about as clear as mud?

Thanks Bob for the update...  Glad its all working out other than what I exspected,  you cant hear shit when your motors running...

Dave,

Where did you get those "Cop-style" helmet speakers??

Thanks,

Mike Barnes

Mike, I have a couple of friends that are BPD motor officers and they got them for me from the radio dept.