Scottish Elises

I know they won't work over long distances but they would be great for driving in convoys, (eg "wait until after the blue van and then there is nothing coming so overtake"*).
And Maplins are doing 4 for 70 quid.

Anyone else think it is a good idea or is it just m wanting to play with walkie talkies and looking for an excuse.

AFAIK they are legal to usein a car as they are not duplex...

Pete

*ALthough it could go horribly wrong -
"Sorry I should have said the SECOND blue van."
"hello. Hello... Ermm are you still there?"

Hands free?

Could the signal be heard by others?


Mac

When the cloggies came over the other week, they all had them and use them all the time, but they were top range models.

Seems to work for them, but I would not use it. I think it takes concentration away from what you should be doing, and I think they were mostly handheld. In fact one driver dropped his and had to stop quickly as it went under a pedal.

However they were staying together as a group of nine, I prefer the five in a group, and whereas I can safely overtake on a blind bend as long as I can see that the car in front is over the centre line, not just indicating, I could not trust a radio message.

The system that we use with an experienced leader, and preferably the others in the group having used it before, is proven to work well.

tut

As tut says I wouldn't recommend for 'immediate' communication. The system seems to work best.

Maybe better as an alternative to mobile phones especially for European trips. Just used as and when...an idea for FF?

I wouldn't use them for overtaking assists etc, but for general comms or to get directions then they could be usefull.
I have a pair with hands free mics, but never used them in-car.

Save your money. It really doesn't work. The mic at the transmitting end picks up so much wind/car noise that you can't hear anything.

It sounds like a cool idea, but I took mine back to the shop and got a refund, as I had no other use for them.



As for overtaking going horribly wrong, I think that's very likely. I wouldn't trust it.

Graeme

pete wrote: Anyone else think it is a good idea or is it just m wanting to play with walkie talkies and looking for an excuse.

I am with what everyone else has said above.

I have reasonably good sets with hands free but have used them for airsofting, on the bike and in the car and they are more of a hinderance than a help.

Save your money for some other gadget such as AMP3's Shure E2g headphones which do work

Sorry, it works absolutely great!

The trick indeed is to buy top of the line radios. We've all bought Motorola GP340 radios. These can be programmed (you will need one programming cable and could *cough*borrow*cough* the programming software.

You will be surprised by the quality of the sound! Then again, driving with windows open above 100mph doesn't work

The ones we've got are GP340 from Motorola. You can pick them up relatively cheap at Ebay (that's where I got them from).

The system we use is:

The leading car does the map reading, the driver is either listening in or the reader is listening in, they normally don't communicate.

The second car is active on the radio. When the leader overtakes, there's enough visual for the second car to do the same. From that moment on, both the leader and second car start driving away from the group while mentioning "FREE" or "UPCOMING TRAFFIC".
If there's upcoming traffic and there's a gap, we say "FREE AFTER WHITE FORD TRANSIT (or something".

When the group is complete, the last car calls "COMPLETE".

The rest of the group does nothing else then listening in while we're driving.

When we're on boring sections, people start chatting etc.

We've started this approx. two years ago and developed this system. It works absolutely great for us. A lot better then any of the other systems we've used as you can really talk people through. We're able to guide a relatively large group through tight traffic, which saves us a lot of time. (and boring stretches because of the waits )

Different systems work for different folk I suppose.

My concern would getting cut out of the car with someone like tut standing over me saying " I could have made that gap..."





Mac

We do try to be on the safe side when calling "FREE"

YvoTuk wrote:Sorry, it works absolutely great!

I forgot that the reason they probably never worked great for me is that I am half deaf

We used some cheaper ones on the trip to Le Mans last year.....

great at slow speeds for meeting up if contact lost... but over 30mph, just got interference from them..... pretty much useless!

was still good fun though.... especially when the car in front was at a toll booth and you shouted "BAWBAG" etc. through it!!.....

DDtB wrote:
was still good fun though.... especially when the car in front was at a toll booth and you shouted "BAWBAG" etc. through it!!.....

As only you would

I have heard of a hands free system that activates the mike when the driver speaks... and has headphones/ear pieces. No idea what or where it can be found

Dominic wrote:I have heard of a hands free system that activates the mike when the driver speaks... and has headphones/ear pieces. No idea what or where it can be found

BT Freeway Pro.

That's the ones I have, got them in Costco for a reasonable price.