Covid 19 Ride

[ricer1]

Last week I rode with five friends that have been to Blue Ridge Parkway many times and had created a route with what they deemed the top roads they had ridden. Due to Covid 19 the roads were empty along with the hotels. There were approximately 10 people at each hotel. We rode 60+ miles on the BRP and only passed four vehicles. The trip was outstanding, we had a light drizzle Thursday morning, by noon the roads were dry. Temperatures were in the 70's every afternoon. The road I really enjoyed was the Back Of The Dragon, great twisties, very little traffic and the road was in great shape. 

Four of us bought the new Sena 50's hoping to improve our communication systems. I have owned Sena 10 and 20' models, they were OK, but there were many pairing issues, reconnecting problems when people were out of range and rejoined, sound quality with static and wind noise. If you had more than two people connected the communication sound quality dropped off with each unit connected. The music sound quality was pretty good when not using the Sena's for communication, when listening to music when someone would talk the sound was either to loud to hear voices or the volume was almost off. It was either communicate of listen to music.

Sena did a great job on the 50 series, the Mesh 2.0 is a game changer! To connect you simple push the mesh button, it opens the mesh system and everyone is connected. Once we had the setting levels correct, we could listen to music at the volume we wanted and if someone spoke the music continued to play at the same level and voice was clearly in the background. There was no static or wind noise. When I finally left the group I could barely tell the difference in the music clarity once the communication connection was off. The range in Mesh mode was around one mile with great clarity. We didn't check, but the Mesh technology is supposed to work like a daisy chain and if each unit is a mile apart there can be five miles with units in between. Listening to music at the same volume the entire ride while communicating was a huge advantage of the Sena 50. 

Edited May 20, 2020 by ricer1

[durk]

Sounds like good times

[Shoop]

So, the hotels were happy to have customers and didn't try to put you into quarantine for having crossed state state lines? 😁

> My wife is the paranoid one, but sometimes it rubs off on me. 

Thanks for the info on the 50. I'll probably keep my 10R till it dies. But it seems like mesh is finally living up to the advertising.

Chris