Through the years, even my old ears have noticed that some things are just ))LOUDER(( than others.... babies are louder at 3 am, my girlfriend is louder when she's mad, a rock band is always louder than a string quartet, my .338 with the BOSS is much louder than any crowned rifle barrel.... and the electronic caller on my pickup that I use for coyote howling and night hunting, built from an Ipod, a 30 watt single-channel public address amplifier, and a TOA SC-130 speaker, is a whole lot louder than any tape deck or cd player or ANY remote caller I've ever used. Maybe that much VOLUME isn't necessary, and Mr. Coyote with his big ears is going to run to any squealing school girl noise he hears regardless of volume... but on a windy night, I'd like to believe that the extra sound helps pull those eyes out of the distant darkness and into rifle/shotgun range. I don't really know what difference all that volume makes, but at least when the ranch dogs bark back at me from some place that is obviously two or more miles away, and the wind is just right and I'm lucky enough to hear them responding, I know my howler is carrying the mail. That's the reason I asked my couple of semi-naive questions before. Restated, I'd ask,”How loud is it?"
"How loud can it be running on flashlight batteries?"
If I were electronically and mathematically inclined, I suppose I could do a few calculations of my own and figure what the maximum wattage available from a pocket full of AAA batteries might be. B.M. (love those initials, they fit him so well) touts 13-14 watts out of his remote caller using a gel-cell. That un-named caller hurts my ears though it isn't near as loud as sitting in a foxhole behind a 155. What is the S/N ratio of a howitzer anyway?
All speakers are not created equal either. I tend to like monaural sound, single channel amps, and one single speaker on my rat squeak broadcaster, but that's just me. Stereo-style is fine too and a jillion critters have died coming to converted car stereos and boom boxes. But when I rigged the caller on the truck using a TOA CA-130 p.a., I tested several speakers in a very unscientific fashion. The ear test. For some reason that TOA speaker is ))LOUDER(( than the JBL's, the Panasonic, and the Radio Shack speakers I tried and it didn't matter if I used one speaker, or two, wired in series or parallel. The TOA won hands down. Two coyotes showed up during the test. From the barking out on the back 40, even they picked the TOA! I suppose that gets me back to my original speaker sensitivity question. And that's why I said all speakers aren't created equal.
One of the guys in my club has an FPIII on order, and one of these days we’ll stand it side by side with a Loudmouth, a WT, the TOA setup I mentioned, and whatever else we can muster and we’ll give it a totally unscientific ear test and maybe we’ll get to kill test them too. I wish Snowcamoman had a copy of my 12volt mobile rig so he could compare it to his box full of remote callers. He could include it in his test, just for comparison's sake, put his little decibel meter in front of that speaker, and answer my real questions.
"So, how loud is it?"
and
"Does it make any difference to Mr. Coyote?"
