A good aviation headset makes a big difference

One of the cool things about flying out of Twin Oaks Airpark is the fact that Betty Stark, who owns the place with her husband, has loaned me a variety of the different headphones they sell in the small pilot shop they have set up in the business office.

One of the brands of aviation headsets they carry is Lightspeed Aviation, which happens to be a local company (they're based in Lake Oswego, Oregon - which is in the Portland metro area). After wearing a couple of the less-expensive headsets from a few makers, all of which were pretty darned good, I tried a couple of the automatic noise reduction (ANR) models, at the strong encouragement of Betty (she's a very effective and patient salesperson, heh).

In a Cessna 150, which is a fairly noisy little airplane, not wearing a headset would be pretty miserable. The planes we fly require you wear a headset to be able to use the radios at all, and the built in intercom allows both occupants to talk to each other easily. What I found was that the headsets I tried were all good, but he ANR ones were noticeably better.

For me, the decision of which headset to purchase came down to two primary differences I noted in the model I chose. First, the microphone picked up my not-quite-loud-enough voice very well, even over the cabin noise. That's a big deal if you want to be understood clearly by others. It also has an adjustable microphone gain setting (which I didn't even have to change).

The second feature was important to me from a safety standpoint. One thing (among many) that you want to avoid doing in an airplane is stalling the aircraft. The plan has a stall warning horn that gets louder and louder as you get closer to a stall. Unfortunately, what I found - especially in a power-on stall situation - was that the ambient noise and headset made it difficult to hear the stall horn except at its loudest. But with the ANR headset I chose, I was able to hear the horn in stall practices from its initial warning stages.

Being able to hear the warning horn was a very big deal to me. Add to the features I already mentioned a couple more cool ones, such as the ability to plug in an MP3 player or a cell phone (which sounds great), and the Lightspeed Thirty 3G headset was all I needed (and then some). When listening to music from the MP3 player (which I don't do now, I need to stay focused on flying as a student), if the radio kicks in the headset automatically reduces the volume of the music player so you can hear the radio clearly. The Thirty 3G is not Lightspeed's most expensive headset (that honor goes to their lighter-weight and Bluetooth-enabled Zulu model), but it's right up there among the best.

The folks at Twin Oaks sell the Thirty 3G for a full $100 less than I was able to find it at any of the other local pilot shops, so if anyone's interested in this model, call Betty at Twin Oaks or get hold of me via email or phone. I'm certain Betty would be glad to sell you one. I doubt you'll find it for less online, even. The online store I checked out at sells it for $50 more than Twin Oaks' price.

Since I have an iPhone 3G, I also needed a small adapter cord so the phone headset plug would fit properly. Here's a link to the adapter on Amazon.com in case anyone else wants to use their iPhone with the Thirty 3G headset. It only cost about $7 and arrived today. I tested it out tonight by hooking up my flight headset and iPhone and calling a friend (to plan a flight for this Sunday - quite appropriate!). I won't be using it for quite some time (and it's not exactly legal with the FCC to make calls from the air, anyhow), but I'll have it all set up when it's appropriate and time for it.