Eric in Chicago

I am looking to buy a set of racing radios. Any recommendations? I am thinking of a 4 watt system as one of the tracks I race at is Road America which is pretty big.
Any systems to avoid or any features that are a must? My thought is to have a radio that could monotior both the corner worker/race control and be able to talk to my pit crew. Hearing the race control is not essential but would be nice if my pit crew did not show up for the race! I assume with a multiple ch. radio, I could tune to the public ch for race info.

Thanks in advance for any advice

BTW, if someone has a used set for sale, I would be interested as well

Bob Rouleau

Eric,

Racing Radios are a good choice (the company). I admit a bias because my company makes the radio deck they use. It still worked after dale Ernhart's crash if that means anything.

The trick with radios is antenna height. Frequencies used for pit to car communications are mostly line of site (not completely but mostly). If your base station antenna is ten feet off the ground and the track is hilly, you will not be able to communicate with your pit if you are on the other side of several millions tons of dirt and rocks. If the track is flat then a 4 watt radio with a decent base station antenna and a whip on the car will work fine over a path of several miles even if the base antenna is only 10-20 feet up. Race control usually has an antenna on a mast on top of the control tower - up about 50-60 feet and it can talk to all the corner workers if they use radios as opposed to wired in intercoms.

I suspect this will trigger questions, happy to help as I can.

Regards,

Eric in Chicago

Thanks Bob!
I was planning on having my pit crew with a headset and radio set up so I guess that at tracks like RA, full track communication will not work. I guess the next best thing would be to use the corner worker ch. to know when the track goes green after a full course yellow (I got burned at my last club race on the re start by guys with radios) As I dont know anyone else running radios, I assume the main puropse is to let the crew know when I am going to pit and to be aware of what is going on behind me/in front of me.

Eric in Chicago

Bump
Any more info???
TIA

SundayDriver

I think you can pretty well count on no communications in places like Canada Corner at RA. But coming onto the front straight, it should work fine. You shouldn't be all the way back at Canade Corner when the green drops anyway.

Even Mid Ohio has some trouble spots but most places you can hear enough to get the gist of what is going on.

I got my radios from Speedcom and have been happy with performance and service.

ngoldrich

Eric,

My new car has a 40Watt (or 25 watt, I cannot remember) UHF hardwired motorola radio in the car. It has a huge ground plane for the antenna since thr car is carbon. I have not yet tried it but I am guessing it will work better than all my other 4 & 5 watt UHF radios I have had.

I have always used the top level Motorola radios in all cars and never had any problems. I have heard that some of the Kenwood radios are now also excellent.

Just my experience. Plus with hardwired, you dont have to worry about remembering to charge your radio battery.

Although, to be honest, I have not even tried the radio system, so just another point for whatever its worth...

Also, the type of antenna & ground plane is critical to how far you will transmit. Stay away from the small Indycar whip antennas. I used one on my CanAm car and ended up replacing it with a normal antenna...

Norm

Bob Rouleau

FWIW - all things being equal a 40 watt radio will talk roughly twice as far as a 4 watt radio. Unless you have a plastic car, a simple whip will work fine. With a CF body you need either a vertical dipole (no ground plane needed) or an artifical ground plane made of copper foil. The dipole has the advantage of increasing effective power but it is more than double the size. The trick is the path between the base and the mobile, if it is line of site a low power radio will work very well. In a race car you need something rugged, Motorola Kenwood, Icom and Tait all made radios which meet Mil 810 shock and vibrations specs (that's the spec for Tank mounted electronics). Various specialty firms like Racing Radios package radios into systems well adapted to the racing environment. One of the things to watch out for is easy availability of spare connecting cords headsets etc. Cable and connectors fail often.

Best,

Laura

FWIW We use Motorola DM300 in our cars, and have numerous headsets, and channels. Radios usually run between 25-40 watts and if needed can be hooked to our repeater. We recently ran at Road America with no base or repeater and had no problems around the track. Cars are all hardwired. Be sure you have a few channels to choose from and all crew radios are programmed the same. You never know when you will get interference from someone elses radio or your channel is the most popular at the track. If you may be adding other drivers to your system for enduros and such, be sure the system you choose is adaptable and expandable. As Bob said, the headsets and plugins have to be available parts, they can get damaged easily by an excitable driver exiting the car. If you are looking for a large system, you can sometimes find a large group of radios on e-bay or some of the racing message boards for sale. It can get costly if you are outfitting a team. But they are a great asset at the track for safety and strategy..

Kurt R

My $0.02 worth of information: I crewed for a guy at the World Challenge race at Road America a couple of weeks ago. All he had were some inexpensive GMRS radios, no external antenna for the car, and we were able to talk to him from the pit lane to the carousel. We never tried past there, but I was amazed we were able to talk that far away.

Sidetrack question: What's the best place to shop for headset cables? I picked up a cheap Motorola headset made by David Clark, just wondering where is the best place to get a cable?

Eric in Chicago

Thanks for the replys everybody. I was trying to pick up a set for this weekends race but time is running out and I will take my time shopping over the winter.
Laura, the hardwired sets, are they the standard handsets with power from the car or are they the "box" type recievers?

GUMBALL

Racing Radios (800-669-1522) has complete race packages (sometimes they have used systems too)
Motorola makes several radios that will talk on the "car channels" as well as scan several programmed frequencies - I have mine set up to scan Race Control, Safety, & Rescue, which leaves 2 "car channels" - 1 for crew chief to driver, the other for crew communication.

924RACR

On the cheap end of the spectrum - I just received (last night) a helmet kit from Motocomm (www.motocomm.com). They sell kist for Motorcycle use, for use with GRMS and FRS radios. Cost was all of $60, and uses separate PTT and velcro-mount ear speakers and mike. Very good stuff, all weather-sealed DIN connectors, PTT will velcro strap around the shifter very nicely (designed to strap to a handlebar or glove), and took all of 5 minutes to install in my helmet. Very nice, good sound quality, doesn't seem like it'll have trouble overpowering my rather loud exhaust. A whole lot cheaper than useing the "pro" stuff, and seems like it would interface with pro radios simply by swapping in the right y-cable.

Haven't tested on track yet, but will in a few more weeks.

M758

Vaughan,
I have used motorola GRMS radios with great sucess for the past couple years. They are not fancy, but get the job done at the tracks I have been to. Only note is that you pit crew radio person will want some type of ear protection. I have my person use old pistol range silecers. These fit over the ear and drown out alot of the background noise so they can hear me. I just have them run the ear plug under the ear protection.

924RACR

Good point - though at our home track, the crew stand up in a tower overlooking the track, not trackside... much better vantage point. So noise isn't a problem there... but yes, good call for other places. Now we'll just get an external antenna on...

Laura

Eric, the units in the cars are mobile units, not portables or handie talkies. Handie talkies are used by all the crew with full headsets that attenuate outside noise and have noise cancelling mics. (nix the mics for guests who we don't want talking!) They work pretty well. If need be we do have a portable repeater than we use, but it we usually don't use it unless we are using the other antenna for real time feed for MOTEC data aquisition in the pits and GPS. (radio/electronic geeks in the family)