About 30 years ago, when I was riding a motorcycle full-time, year-round, there was little you could do to communicate with other riders. Much like scuba-diving, hand signals were used and had to be predetermined by anyone riding in your group. Turn signals became very important and travel routes had to be preplanned. Today: Welcome to the 21st century where easy to mount and easy to use mesh intercom systems are available. Recently, my wife and I started riding again and we invested in such a system: the Sena 30K Mesh Intercom System.
As a complete novice to such systems, I was happy to let our local dealership folks (in the parts department) mount them to our helmets. The Sena 30K system has one piece that mounts to your helmet, wired to the included HD speakers and microphone. Once that piece is mounted, there is a second piece that slides/snaps onto it. That second piece contains the controls and antenna. It is removable and rechargeable and the system comes with the necessary charging cords for either a car charger (cigarette lighter plug) or an AC/USB charger (wall outlet).
This article appeared in the July issue of OFFICER Magazine. Click Here to view the digital edition. Click Here to subscribe to OFFICER Magazine.
While many of us are notorious for failing to read instructions, there is a small booklet that comes with the system you MUST pay attention to. It has directions for turning the system on, selecting your function, adjusting volume, etc. The system not only allows you to communicate from rider to rider, but it also has functionality to let you answer your cell phone and stream music from your phone. Because of the design, you can do these things by touch control on the mounted slide-on piece, even while wearing riding gloves.
While you can buy a single headset or you can buy them in a pair, you can mesh up to eight of them together. They have different channels available that you can select through voice command, and since there is no need to push anything to talk—you simply talk and the microphone stays open—it’s essentially like holding a conversation while you ride. This functionality makes it much easier to communicate needs, turns, changes, concerns, etc. while you’re out on the motorcycle. My wife and I have found that it greatly enables us to share observations about potential threats, road conditions and more.
Our cost was just over $500 for the set of two but you can find them at lower prices online. We chose to purchase at our local dealership so that if we ran into any issues, we could return it or swap it out. As mentioned, they also installed it for us which involved removing a couple of the inside pads. It’s not a big deal and you should know how to do it anyway for cleaning and maintenance of your helmet.
So, if you’re looking for a way to communicate with your ride mates or if you simply want a way to answer your phone or listen to tunes while you’re riding, check it out at Sena.com.
This article appeared in the July issue of OFFICER Magazine.
