It finally dawned on me that I spend 2 weeks post-burn every year hacking up playa dust and feeling totally enervated. Assuming that I don't just manage to catch bronchitis every time I go to Burning Man, I'm finally cluing in that I should REALLY be careful of breathing too much playa. So I've got a heavy duty dust mask and even a gas mask as well (just 'cause it looks crazy). But will I be able to talk to people with one of these things over my face? I'm inclined to doubt it.
I decided to see if I could make a throat mic work. I ordered a moderately priced one from Amazon (Midland AVPH8 Acoustic Throat Mic for GMRS Radios ) and an amp-in-a-box kit from maker shed. Today I got it all assembled and it actually works!
It turned out a bit more expensive than I'm thrilled about - $30 each for the 2 main components - but I'm still pretty psyched.
If anyone wants to try the same thing, it was pretty easy once I figured it out.
In addition to the above, I used a 3 aaa cell battery pack and a mono 1/4 in jack from radio shack. Clip off the plug end from the mic/headset. There are 4 very fine wires inside - red is hot, blue is ground, yellow is mic signal, and green is earphone signal (which I'm not using so I clipped it off short). Solder red(mic) to red(battery). Solder blue(mic) and black(battery) to outer sleeve of jack. Solder yellow to tip connector of jack. Seal it all up and plug it into your amp and you're good to go.
throat mic
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geekster
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One cause of the bronchitis that goes around post BM could be legionella. If people keep water for showers and misters in barrels that can be exposed to playa dust, legionalla will get in there and thrive. Swamp coolers are also a prime source of it. If your shower/mister/swamp cooler water supply is exposed to playa dust and if the water is over 80F but below 130F, legionalla will explode in population in hours. 85F is the optimum temperature for that bacteria.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
Would adding a little bit of bleach to swamp cooler water kill the bacteria?geekster wrote:One cause of the bronchitis that goes around post BM could be legionella. If people keep water for showers and misters in barrels that can be exposed to playa dust, legionalla will get in there and thrive. Swamp coolers are also a prime source of it. If your shower/mister/swamp cooler water supply is exposed to playa dust and if the water is over 80F but below 130F, legionalla will explode in population in hours. 85F is the optimum temperature for that bacteria.
This is the thread I meant: http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic. ... amp+cooler
Looks like a little bleach wouldn't be a bad idea. Cheap insurance. http://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/legionnaires/faq.html