Bluetooth drives me barmy

OK I don’t understand Bluetooth but then it’s supposed to just work isn’t it? On the Goldwing, I hear my GPS and other stuff (radio, CB etc) through a wired connection and the bike’s built-in intercom system but on the GS I have been using custom earplugs with built in speakers connected to the original Bluetooth dongle that came with my TomTom Rider 1. Those earplugs can get uncomfortable after an hour or two and and it”s a rather fragile wire that”s connected to them so I have been looking for an alternative.

My first thought was to put all my wishes in one basket and look for a Bluetooth flip up helmet with a retractable sun visor. Nolan make one but it doesn’t fit my head – like many flip ups it seems very short from front to back and presses hard on my admittedly big chin. OK so now I have to choose between a sunvisor and built in-bluetooth. The latter seems as a rare as rocking horse manure but there is a Viper RS101 helmet which I have not tried. I am perhaps perversely rather put off by its low price – £94.99 seems unlikely to buy very much head protection or quality and in a helmet I want both.

So, I decide to stick for the time being with my BMW system 5 and try to fit a Bluetooth headset to it. Accordingly I got a Scala Rider Q2 and managed to wangle it into the helmet with less difficulty than I had feared. The lump that sits outside the helmet is in the wrong place to use the microphone, being far too far back on the side of the helmet (forced there by the flip front) but as I want it primarily to listen to the GPS and its built in radio, this is not too much of a problem. Next job was to sync it with my GPS. I knew there might be a problem with the Rider 1 so I tried first with the Garmin 2820 on the Wing. It took me ages to learn how to put the headset in pairing mode. This was owing to a combination of not reading the instructions properly and impatience. When I had understood the unit must first be switched on before pressing the same switch again for an extended period to set it looking for marriage partners, I did eventually pair with the Garmin. But why oh why can’t we have a simple on/off switch instead of these stupid press it and pray type things that take forever to do something?

Next I tried and failed several times to pair with the TomTom. After several bouts of cursing I eventually succeeded by dint of understanding that the darn thing was trying and failing to pair with its original headset because that is what I was telling it to do in response to a rather ambiguous Yes/No query in its menu system. Finally in frustration, I realised I had to tell it to be more promiscuous and go and look for another partner when, thankfully it found the Scala Rider that had given up and gone home, or at least had stopped trying to pair on many previous attempts.

With the popularity of flip up helmets, sun visors and Bluetooth, I cannot understand why every helmet manufacturer is not in the game – ah well, that’s life at the bleeding edge I suppose..