yamaha intercom

I went to Calgary last summer and bought a bike that I had never ridden before, twice as big as anything I had ridden before. In a part of the city that I had never driven before, in the rain, through construction, in rush hour. Did I miss anything here?

Isn't it purty.

First of all being a touring bike it has a built in intercom, alas I did not have the headsets for the helmets. No problem, they must sell them somewhere, right? They do! Yaa! $300.00!!!! EACH!!!!! There is always plan 'B', especially since my financial advisor (re: wife) informs me controlled spending is good for my pocketbook and my health.

A quick trip to 'Wally World' and I bought 2 sets of head phones for $5.17 and some sticky velcro pads in the sewing section for $1.27. Don't tell any one I was in the sewing section though, it might tarnish my reputation.

The headphones were then mercilessly chopped to bits with my killer side cutters and gently installed in the helmets with the velcro pads.

Ignore the grey hair in the helmet, I don't know WHERE that came from!

All I needed now is a mike. I had lots of condenser mikes laying around so for the summer I used them.

The issue here is that condenser mikes have to be powered as opposed to dynamic mikes. A quick solution was to simply add power.

There is a 9 volt battery, capacitor, resistor, and a potentiometor all taped together.

Did you know that a floppy drive cable from a Commador 64 will plug right in to the existing connector. Cut in half and presto 2 connectors.

Total cost... $5.17 X2 + $1.27 + 2 9volt bateries. My math ain't so better but I think I am still under $600.00.

This worked but there is always room for improvment, this winter I decided to do some tinkering with it. I found an old set of headphones and cut them down to size. When you get to the speaker itself it is really quite small. The small speaker seems to be an excellent substitute for a dynamic mike. Well at least it works in the shop; for some reason the wife just will not go for a ride to test them at -20 C.

Update: Went back to Walmat (i am such a cheapskate) and puchased a set of "ear buds" They are much smaller! The highest impedence I could get was 32 ohms, a far dry from the 600 that it should have. The intercom works good but I am getting a lot of engine noise in to the ham raidio. Ah well there is always next winter.