Any ideas? I would like to have a two way radio that is a headset, small and voice activated. I have a very hard time communicating with my help when I am in the machine and he is on the job site. I find myself turning the throttle down opening the door to tell my guy something as simple as picking up the shovel lying on the ground plus many other things. I have to tell (yell at) these guys every move so a simple way to do this would help.
http://www.eartec.com/ We have a set of the full duplex headsets for moving our barges. I can be on deck on either end and talk to my skiff operators and crane operator. They are open mike so we can all talk and hear each other.
The VOX headsets you are talking about are good for normal use but tend to get kind of annoying when in a loud environment. Excessive noise will cause the channel to remain "open" even when you are not speaking. It would probably work good for you, since you are in the cab, but most likely you will be getting "false" transmissions from your workers around the machine. Not saying it won't work, but even the ones with sensitivity settings don't like loud environments. A better solution would be a 2-way radio with a shoulder microphone. The shoulder microphone plugs into the side of the radio and is clipped on your shirt or vest. This lets the radio remain clipped to your side and the microphone easily accessible. Still requires you to key the mic with your hand but you don't have to have anything in your hand, or worry about clipping something back on your belt, after you are finished talking. We use these here at the quarry. Kenwood TK-3200 They are pretty weather resistant and hold up really well in our quarry environment. They will set you back about $200 for the radio and $50 for the shoulder microphone. Let me know if you needs further comment. On Edit: I had forgot about the head sets like Lash posted. I've never tried them personally. I should add that I have tried the VOX before, while moving our trains, and we had problems with the mic staying open due to the noise level. This was the Kenwood VOX system that we tried.
You can get small pocket 2 ways for pretty cheap these days and there are available VOX headsets too. My wife had used them in the theater where she works. You'll need a headset that is noise canceling though so the machine noise doesn't activate it. Radio Shack has them, so does Sportsman's Guide.com.
Never used anything like that. Would it be like talking on the phone?
Yes, its just like that. Anybody can talk and everyone can hear. You can only have four people hooked up at a time though. The set comes with a master and three remotes. They have different style headsets. The ones we have are the same the pit crews use in Nascar. You can wear a hardhat with them because the tensioner goes around the back of your head. There expensive, I think about $650.00 per radio.
Hmm.....time to give the supervisor a new wish list. When I toured one of the Railroad's switch yards, they were using something like that. It seemed to work pretty good but I didn't get to try it out myself.
I don't know how far apart you will be. If you have a good line of site they are good for a quarter mile. If theres lots of obsructions like conex boxes all over its less than that. I bought these about 8 years ago and they sent them to me to try for a couple weeks. If I didn't like them I could have returned them.