Headsets

[Terry Carraway]

Since it looks like I am getting back into flying, what is the current recommendation for headsets?

I was always a David Clark person in the old days.

[A. Niemyer]

Well...it depends. I have come full circle in ANR's. I've had the Gen 1 head-weights, and since then have gone from D-Cs to Bose to Lightspeeds back to Bose to Sennheisers, and now for the past several years have been very happy with D-C One-X over-the-ear units. Some of my choices have been driven by how well each model has played with my various hearing aids. When it comes to headsets, it's a very purely personal choice.

[Bruce Gorrell]

I'm really happy with my Lightspeeds. The ANR is second to none (sitting between two R2800s). They work well with my hearing aids, including Bluetooth. Battery life is about twice what my co pilots get on their Bose headsets.

[Dave Siciliano]

I tried Lightspeeds and they were great in the booth. In my P-Baron, they had terrible feedback. Bose worked great. It depends

[Rick Durden]

Over the last several years I've used most of the ANR headsets and frankly haven't had a bad experience with any of them. In terms of hearing protection, ANR is a must, IMHO, beyond that, the competition between manufacturers is so tough that all of them seem very good to me.

[Dusty Rider]

I second the opinion that ANR is a must.

I am a Lightspeed Sierra user and have been for the past four years or so. What I like about the Lightspeed is the ANR is just enough to preserve my hearing (especially in the Twin Otter), but not so intense that I lose the ability to hear what's going on with the aircraft. The only issue I have with them is that the phone jack sometimes doesn't make a good connection in some of the aircraft I fly. That is, once I plug in the phone jack, I have to pull it out to about the first click to be able to hear anything. Another pilot on my fleet has had the same issue with his Lightspeed in the same aircraft. Other headsets seem to work just fine, though. The only possible explanation I have for this is that they must be using some 1/4" manufacturer that makes the jack a couple of microns too small. They were kind enough to take my headset back and do some repair work on it free of charge (I did pay to ship it to them, but they paid for the return). I will say that my phone jack issue has only ever occurred in two aircraft of dozens I've flown, so it's not something I'm all that worried about.

I've borrowed Bose headsets a couple of times now and I will say that the ANR in those ears is incredibly strong. The noise attenuation is so strong, in fact, that I sometimes wonder if I would actually be able to hear faint noises if something starts to go wrong. I have also heard good things from my co-pilots who fly with DC headsets with ANR, although I have never tried them myself.

[Terry Carraway]

Thanks for all the input.

Since I have many hours in DC, and they seem to be good, I will probably stick with them.

[Stephanie Belser]

Since it looks like I am getting back into flying,

That's great news!

[Terry Carraway]

Thanks.

I will post another thread on getting back.

But I did find my old DC 10-40 and it works fine. And so I can save some money for now. Eventually, I will get noise cancelling.

[Gil Buettner]

I fly five to seven days a week with the trusty DC 10-40 headset I purchased about 45 years ago. I have access to a noise-canceling headset but really don't care for it. Just too used to the sounds, I guess.

[Ray Tackett]

Thanks.

I will post another thread on getting back.

But I did find my old DC 10-40 and it works fine. And so I can save some money for now. Eventually, I will get noise cancelling.

I'm with Gil. Especially when there's only one engine keeping me out of the weeds and rocks, I want to hear it in the background.

[Terry Carraway]

I have never tried noise cancelling in a piston aircraft.

But using them as a passenger on airlines, I find that they do not do much more than basic headphones for transient sounds. Like a baby crying. They work best against constant pitch and volume sounds, like jet engine or wind.

But, I was perfectly happy with my 10-40, and will stick with that for now.

[Stephanie Belser]

I was thinking that, back when Terry was last into flying, we were still on Compuserve, a lot of us were still using TAPCIS and dialup modems and one of the hot discussions was whether or not UFOs were powered by cat poop.

Good times.

[Scott Dyer HPN/NY]

I'm with Gil. Especially when there's only one engine keeping me out of the weeds and rocks, I want to hear it in the background.

I find that I hear more of unusual sounds with noise canceling, e.g., the creaks in the airframe while taxiing in very cold weather, and I have no problem hearing changes in engine sound. Wouldn't go back to non-ANR....

[Terry Carraway]

I was thinking that, back when Terry was last into flying, we were still on Compuserve, a lot of us were still using TAPCIS and dialup modems and one of the hot discussions was whether or not UFOs were powered by cat poop.

Good times.

VERY true. I was one of those using TAPCIS. And when traveling, I carried a kit of phone plug adapters to get online by phone from hotels in various countries.

At least laptops were common, not like Deakin-san and his luggable that he plugged into aircraft power. I remember some people telling him it wouldn't work on 400 Hz aircraft AC power, even though he was doing it almost every flight.