Autocom Radios

We are off to France next week. LB will be riding his GS and I will be on the Blade. Back last November we treated ourselves to some Autocom radio systems while visiting the bike show. These were the Pro 300's with the Kenwood Pro Talk TK-3201 radios which we have had wired in to the two GS's. This system worked well for our long summer tour as we were able to wire the Zumo GPS to LB's bike and both radios took power from the bikes so we didn't have to worry about recharging the batteries. I don't want the expense of duplicating this on the Blade as most of the time I won't use it for long tours & I won't have GPS on it. I am therefore going to use the simple option, as shown in the photo. I will use my existing radio but with the battery attached, I already have a headset in my lid so have just bought the connecting cable which will use the blue connector to plug into a push to talk (PTT) button, which is now attached to the bars of the Blade by a couple of cable ties. We had a test run last night with me inside the garage and LB outside and it worked ok. There's rather a lot of excess cable but this will stuff into my tankbag.

We had avoided radios for many years as we thought they'd be distracting. I had eventually got fed up of jumping up and down, waving my arms and flashing my lights when I could see LB, in front, taking the wrong route. It's been a great improvement, especially as LB now has a GPS and I don't. He can relay to me the Zumo instructions and I can tell him roadsigns etc that I see. We don't use it for general chit chat much but it is nice to be in touch. We didn't fancy the French trip without it. We're setting off next Wednesday so watch this space for our next travel reports!

Elvie