Road Captain USA

Fast Lane Biker Delmarva’s December 2010 issue is now available online. Flip to page 13 to read part 4 of Diana’s personal story and her quest to ride. Click here. 

Tags: Fast Lane Biker by Jay Green
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When riding a motorcycle, every second counts.  Motorcycle safety courses and departments of motor vehicles tell riders to keep a minimum two-second following distance behind the vehicle in front of you.  But motorcyclists should constantly scan and anticipate what is coming at them much farther down the road.  Cagers often don’t see us, so we need to take the responsibility to see them…the sooner the better.

Besides being aware of approaching vehicles, intersections, obstacles in the roadway, and poor road conditions as you approach them, a good rider will also take actions so as to prepare for these things should they suddenly become hazards.  Cruising down the highway with your legs stretched out on the cruise pegs is a welcome relief for stiff or cramping legs, and it’s super cool…but needing to relocate your feet back to the controls to be able to break or shift in an emergency situation adds valuable seconds to your response time.

Whenever approaching an intersection, blind curve, or any other situation where there is an increased likelihood of encountering trouble, it is a good idea to take your feet back off those highway pegs and put them in position where they are ready to brake or shift.  Feet are not the only thing that needs to prepare.  Cover both brake and clutch levers with your hands so as to eliminate the time needed to reach and grab them, leaving only the time it takes for the actual squeeze. 

Besides preparing yourself physically, you can also shave seconds through mental preparation.  Having an “escape” pre-planned can cut down on your reaction time because there is no hesitation while you evaluate the situation and decide what to do…you already have!  Practice emergency braking and swerve techniques in an empty parking lot on a regular basis, or take rider safety course.  These skills keep you in tip-top shape for when you need to use them. 

Keeping your motorcycle in good shape will help too.  Properly inflated tires and maintained brakes allow your bike to come to a stop more quickly.  All of these little things add up.  Shaving a few tenths of a second by covering your brakes & clutch, a few more by having your feet in ready position, even more for proper brakes and tires, and more still for mental & skill preparation all combined together can literally shave up to three seconds off of your response time.

Three seconds?  Big deal, right?  Well actually, yeah it is a big deal!  Many of us tend to overlook the obvious.  Riding at 30 mph actually means that you are moving a distance of approximately 50 feet in a second.  A typical intersection is only 50 feet wide.  That means that if you even saved just one second off your response time, it could make the difference between your bike stopping before you reach that car suddenly pulling out in front of you or not stopping until you’ve actually slammed into, skidded under, or flown over it…and that’s only one second at 30 mph!  Just think of the distance you could save over 3 seconds at 60 mph!

Those 3 seconds very well might save you – and your Harley – from a bad scrape!

Tags: Mrs Road Captain, Rider Skills, Road Captain Stuff by Diana Green
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“Am I crazy?  I am the pee-wee football team mom, the little league baseball scorebook keeper, etc.  I am the professional spectator!  I won’t even play volleyball at a backyard cookout.  What am I thinking?  Learn to ride a motorcycle?  I must be crazy – I don’t even know what a throttle is!”

“Therein is exactly the point!  I need to know what a throttle is.  I need to find out how you shift gears with your hands.  Maybe I will never actually take the handlebars myself after the class, but I have got to find out how this machine works!”  So off I went on a search for motorcycle riding lessons…

First I discovered that there was something called a Motorcycle Safety Basic Rider Course offered through the Motor Vehicle Administration.  It only cost like a hundred bucks…I could do that.  Except every class was booked up all the way through October!  Maybe if I checked another location…nope, they were all booked up too!  I guessed this motorcycle frenzy was bigger than I thought.  Harley-Davidson stocks were up to $50 a share that year, and every time I turned around there was another motorcycle themed show popping up on TV.

Then I found that Harley dealers offered a Rider’s Edge class, but at $250 that was way out of my league!  If I could somehow manage to swing it…no, they were all booked up too.  “Why am I so upset about this?  I’m just a psycho divorcee trying desperately to find myself.  I probably won’t even be able to handle those big bikes anyway.  This whole idea is just stupid.”

I pined away in disappointment for months until one day out of the blue Jay called and told me he had just signed up for a Basic Rider Class at Cecil Community College and there were still a few slots open if I was interested.  Within 24-hours I was registered for the class, though it wouldn’t be until the end of August.

In the meantime it occurred to me that if I was going to learn to ride, no one in their right mind was going to let some crazy 36-year old chick practice riding on their prized Harley!  (Not to mention the fact that I barely even knew anyone who had a bike anyway)  I figured I’d have to pick up some old used piece of crap machine that was cheap and it didn’t matter if I dropped it a million times.  Yet I didn’t know a Ninja from a Goldwing, so I’d better start doing some research into just how much this kind of thing might cost me.

“I’ve never been on eBay before…”

* This article first appeared in print in the November issue of Fast Lane Biker Delamarva and is the third in an ongoing series of articles by Diana Green.

Tags: Mrs Road Captain by Diana Green
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The December East Coast Biker Online is online! Diana has a brand new never before published article on page 34. I haven’t even read yet it! I have a product review of Fox Creek Leather Chaps on page 56. Click here to check it out.

Tags: East Coast Biker Online by Jay Green
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In this third installment of this story I am going to show you how I installed the Midland 75-822 on my Harley-Davidson Low Rider using the Midland’s mobile adapter (part# 18-821). The mobile attachment has a cable with two leads coming off it. One ends in a 12 volt cigarette lighter plug and the other is a coaxial CB base antenna coupling.

Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2. 

First I put my magnetic map holder on the gas tank and removed the seat. I attached my backrest with chrome luggage rack. I used the handheld CB’s belt clip to attach it to the map holder on the gas tank. I met someone at the DE/MD State HOG Rally who had a handlebar mount that holds the CB on the handlebar. She said the handlebar mount was sold by Radio Shack. I would like to try this out and see if it works better than the map holder set up.

I coiled up the twenty feet of coaxial cable coming off the magnetic mount antenna and put it under the motorcycle’s seat. I attached the coaxial couplings from the mobile adapter to the antenna cable. I put the seat back on and mounted the magnetic base antenna on the luggage rack. I plugged the 12 volt cigarette lighter plug into one of my 12 volt cigarette lighter adapters from www.Shop.RoadCaptainUSA.com and attached that to my battery tender quick connect cable (pigtail also available at our online store). I used a few black tie wraps to neaten up the wiring.

This set up didn’t work well and from the advertising propaganda of CB parts and conversations found at online forums I summized the following three problems:

1. Magnetic mount antennas do not provide a good ground. I needed to replace with a traditional CB whip antenna with a ground lead.

2. You should not coil up the excess coaxial cable. I replaced with a short 2′ cable which seems to be a rare item to find as most people need more lead to run through a truck or automobile.

3. The antenna should be held away from the vehicle by a few inches by using an antenna mount.

After picking up a new antenna and mounting it to the luggage rack using a CB antenna mount bracket and gounding it to the screw that holds the seat in place the system was working. I was able to communicate successfully with Diana who was using the J&B handlebar mounted CB. I didn’t take any pictures of this set up.

A problem I experienced several times after that was the cigarette lighter plug would vibrate inside the plug and the quality of the electric contact would worsen causing decreased radio performance. I never did adjust the second antenna’s SWR using an SWR meter. It is possible the 2′ coaxial cable was not of high quality. There is also the possibility the headset was also not the best quality. The ground connection I had to the seat screw may not have been affective. Those possibilites could all be part of the poor performance on the CB set up using the Midland’s mobile attachment to make it into a motorcycle compatable communication device.

I finally put 6 low quality AA batteries into the battery compartment, attached the short 7″ antenna and ditched the mobile set up. Surprisingly this worked better! I wasted about $75 trying to power the radio off the bike’s battery and using a base antenna.

Firestik makes CB antennas that have a great reputation. They make two kinds: GP and NGP. GP (Ground Plane) antennas have a ground lead and need to be grounded to the vehicle’s metal chasis. NGP (No-Ground-Plane) antennas are built for vehicles such as boats where the vehicle chasis is not conductive. I would have liked to keep trying different combinations of antennas including the no-ground-plane antenna to see if this resulted in better performance. However I can’t keep spending money on this project.

The Firestik website which is full of information indicates a poor quality radio with a great antenna will work better than a high quality radio with a poor antenna. In other words the antenna has more to do with the performance than the radio itself. I believed that until the antenna on Diana’s motorcycle came off during a ride. Her J&B CB radio still outperformed my Midland hand held CB with no antenna at all! It suffered very little in performance when the antenna was lost.

I am happy to get rid of the base antenna set up because I like my T-bag attached to my backrest on the luggage rack.

Tags: Technical Stuff by Jay Green
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Time is running out! Sweepstakes ends on December 20th! Win an American Dream from TruckChamp.com!

TruckChamp is having a sweepstakes contest to win a Harley-Davidson Super Glide motorcycle. Just make a purchase at TruckChamp before December 20th or go to the website and enter the sweepstakes. No purchase required. Click below banner ad for more info.

Tags: News & Announcements by Jay Green
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