Project SC300 Road Racer: Part 34 – Cameras are rolling, copy that.

Life has gotten complicated, and, unfortunately, that has meant that Project SC300 has been sitting around for nearly a year. I reached a point, though, where I couldn’t take it anymore. So I threw caution to the wind and decided to attend the jZilla Escape the Pumpkin Spice Latte event at Virginia International Raceway. VIR is an absolutely stunning track. It’s in a picturesque setting, there is lodging on-site, the food at the pagoda is actually reasonably priced and tasty… there’s a lot to like! Oh, and the track layout is absolutely awesome, too! It’s one of the top tracks in the country.

I have some friends that are not far from the track, and one of them decided to self-induce suffering by helping me out for the day. Since I had a radio button on my steering wheel, and some old FRS/GMRS radios laying around, I figured I’d install a radio kit and see how it worked as I’d have someone at the other end of the radio to listen. I also didn’t like how much of the halo from the Sabelt seats was in the camera frame, so I decided to also change my camera mounting setup.

Radio first!

 

blue and black wired racing radios radio kit box
This is a radio car kit from Racing Radios.

My steering wheel was (supposed to be) wired so that the steering wheel button would connect the two sides of the switch together. I had an existing set of cords and headsets and radios from way back in the day when we used to run the DGTrials drifting events.

I called my friend Chad at Racing Radios, sent him some pictures of what I had, told him how my car was set up, and he sent me a quote for this radio kit. Racing Radios is not far from me, being down by the Atlanta airport. I had recently visited there to have my helmet microphone kit installed since the old radio kit in the previous helmet (from before I upgraded to my Arai) was trashy.

If you don’t already have a steering wheel button, Racing Radios offers numerous PTT button solutions. They also sell everything you need for communications, from complete radio kits to accessories and more.

I will definitely upgrade to “real” radios in the near future, but I can use this radio kit with anything I might get later.

 

helmet and radio kit and portable radio all wired together sitting on a chair
Here is the “car” side of everything hooked together.

The radio kit is pretty self-explanatory. Since I told them that my button connects the two sides together, I could simulate that by touching the two wires together. The helmet kit uses a standard headphone jack, so I plugged in some headphones. I hooked up the special cord that goes with my old radio and gave everything a test. Unsurprisingly, it all worked. Although it’s kind of hard to test all of this by yourself.

 

standard circular pinned radio connector
Here’s a close-up of the special radio connector.

The cylindrical 5-pin connector is a standard in communications. The other end needs to be the right type for your radio. In my case, I had some ancient Cobra radios and I already had the cable to go with them. That was lucky because the radios are so old (and so crappy) that Racing Radios doesn’t carry the right connector for them.

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