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Flight helmet recommendations

Airzen

Well Known Member
Hi Folks,

I want to start flying with a helmet in my RV-8.

Biggest concern is a bird strike leading to a shattered canopy, so eye protection is needed as well.

In terms of requirements, comfort and low weight is desirable as I tend to fly long cross country. Also I need the ability to use ANR headphones (Bose or Lightspeed).


Any recommendations/suggestions?

Ashish
 
I just had a brand new HGU-55 built up by Flighthelmet.com, and it turned out great! I wanted a custom-painted helmet to go with my new custom-painted plane (done by John Stahr), and decided to let John go wild on the helmet. I didn’t want to repaint my old HGU (too many memories), so went to Gentex and priced a helmet, then went to Flighthelmets and priced the identical helmet from them. Flighthelmet beat the direct Gentex price by a couple hundred bucks - plus they were able to work with me to ship just the shell to Stahr so he could paint it and ship it back to be built up - great to work with.

I like the new Kevlar shell - very light compared to my old one - and set it up with Oregon Aero liners, standard visor, and GA comm, set up to use either a boom mic or O2 mask. ANR of your choice is, I believe an option.

That’s just some feedback for you on one source....

Paul
 
I have heard good things about Bonehead Composites. I would suspect that they are much lighter than a Mil Helmet. I have been a customer of Flighthelmets.com in the past and always have had good experiences with them.

-larosta
 
I fly with a Bonehead Composites helmet in my Extra. I spent a military career with an HGU brain bucket?loved it?but have discovered that the Bonehead is lighter and lower profile, so I don?t hit it as much on the canopy. If you get a Bonehead, be sure to get the Oregon Aero triangular leather ear cups and cloth ear cup covers. This setup is far superior in comfort and noise attenuation. Bonehead knows all the part numbers now since I prototyped the ear cups for them. It?s not on their website so you?ll need to call and ask for the Oregon Aero upgrade. Good luck!
 
The prices are eye widening. I'll go down to the local Cycle Gear store and buy helmets, modify them,call them Flight helmets and sell them for a fraction of the price. This is not to say these custom airplane products are not good, but $2,500 good or $1000 good? Some look like motorcycle helmets.
 
I had my old Air Force Gentex helmet airbrushed about 9 years ago and added the noise cancelling system to use in my RV-8. I have a newer modern Gentex but still also use a Telex noise cancelling headset and a normal DC headset depending on the mood.

I had it painted after an EMS nurse narc?d on me one night when I forgot my helmet at home and used a headset. About a month later I knew she was working that night in the ER so I used this helmet and she saw me out in my helo on the helipad. She narc?d again but this time when my boss called us in I was able to show that the nurse was just an idiot looking to cause problems and I had a helmet on that night !

You can see a video of it here https://youtu.be/i2gxsZYPnUo
 
I have two helmets. One with ANR and the other with CEP.
I am finding as time goes on I like the one with CEP better. The T-28 would overpower the ANR until I had the prop back at cruise. I seriously doubt an RV is loud enough to do that but it is an issue in some of the louder aircraft. Another advantage of the CEP system is there are no ANR batteries to go dead the instant the gear hit the uplocks on a 2 hour flight which is universally when it happened.
For my CEP helmet I opted for the custom molded inserts to replace the foam plugs. Very comfortable for long duration flights.

For the helmet itself I would go with the custom molded liner. Again, makes the helmet comfortable to wear on long duration flights without localized pain (hot spots).
 
The last post got me thinking and I think i?ll try it : use a cep type headset (I have a Lightspeed Mach-1 I?m not using) inside of a ANR helmet (or ANR headset) to see if it has even more noise reduction.
 
The last post got me thinking and I think i?ll try it : use a cep type headset (I have a Lightspeed Mach-1 I?m not using) inside of a ANR helmet (or ANR headset) to see if it has even more noise reduction.

The flight helmet sold on Aircraft Spruce is just remanufactured motorcycle half helmet with the headsets screwed on the outside of the external shell. The Icaro design looks better though.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/ultraprostandard.php
 
Gibson and Barnes. Outstanding equipment. Quick turn-around for my USAF helmet's modification for GA, and again to install their noise cancelling earpiece system. Outstanding quality and workmanship.
 
I have my son's F-16 helmet with visor, O2 mask, and have a two plug battery operated com cable. On the microphone side the com interface cable needs a new plug. I used to wear the helmet when I owned a Yak. The helmet has been in storage for about 10 years. Gibson did the mod.

Asking $400 including shipping.

https://flic.kr/p/2g9LCSD

I am presently in San Diego, if you would like to drive down to take a look let me know.

Regards,
 
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I have always been under the impression that wearing a good flight helmet would go a long ways in saving your butt if you had a high G impact and crash.

But, there is evidence that a helmet really won't do that much for you. Two recent crashes, a T-51 and a P-51, illustrate the point.

Both crashes were fatal. In one case, the pilot was wearing a helmet. It did not save him.

In the P-51, the passenger died from the impact. He was not wearing a helmet, but the UK authorities stated in the accident report that a helmet would not have saved him.

So...what real good is a helmet? Unless your are a biker, then it makes a lot of sense.

Bird strikes do not concern me that much, as the bird must first fly through a 90" propeller. Won't be anything left after that, but blood, guts, and feathers.
 
Bird strikes do not concern me that much, as the bird must first fly through a 90" propeller. Won't be anything left after that, but blood, guts, and feathers.

Look up some bird strike accidents and you'll learn how wrong you are. Intact, live, very active birds have ended up in the cockpit after coming through the windshields of RV's (and Cessnas, Pipers, etc. etc.). They will be injured by passing through the plane of the propeller, but they are definitely not going to be just turned into mush that can't hurt you.
 
Look up some bird strike accidents and you'll learn how wrong you are. Intact, live, very active birds have ended up in the cockpit after coming through the windshields of RV's (and Cessnas, Pipers, etc. etc.). They will be injured by passing through the plane of the propeller, but they are definitely not going to be just turned into mush that can't hurt you.

Setting aside bird strikes, and in over 25,000 hours of flight time I have never had a windscreen impact, are there any accident reports that clearly state the pilot's life was saved by wearing a flight helmet?

I know of multiple accidents (mostly P-51's) where the helmet was of no help.
 
I have always been under the impression that wearing a good flight helmet would go a long ways in saving your butt if you had a high G impact and crash.

But, there is evidence that a helmet really won't do that much for you. Two recent crashes, a T-51 and a P-51, illustrate the point.

Both crashes were fatal. In one case, the pilot was wearing a helmet. It did not save him.

In the P-51, the passenger died from the impact. He was not wearing a helmet, but the UK authorities stated in the accident report that a helmet would not have saved him.

So...what real good is a helmet? Unless your are a biker, then it makes a lot of sense.

Bird strikes do not concern me that much, as the bird must first fly through a 90" propeller. Won't be anything left after that, but blood, guts, and feathers.

This is a great discussion area, I'm glad you brought it up.
Aren't you omitting key information from your assessment? Consider that a helmet is designed to protect specifically against impact forces directed to the skull and face. What were the actual forces those two people suffered? Whole body impact? Central torso blunt force trauma? Excessive impact forces in (or out of) line with the spine? Internal organ injury from high-G trauma?

Of course the helmet wouldn't have prevented those deaths. High G impact effects the entire body, not just the brain. I urge you not to let the all-or-nothing generalization lead you away from understanding the helmet's basic purpose. Clearly those forces were way outside the helmet's designed sphere of capability. I got hit by a typical WHAMMO north Texas summer updraft while wearing my helmet for formation work, and I hit the canopy so hard with my helmeted head I thought I had cracked the plexi. I have a friend who ground-looped his taildragger no thanks to an unexpected crosswind, totaling his airplane and smacking his head on the glareshield: His lowered visor protected his face. In my F-4 Phantom days, a WSO buddy lost his rear canopy during a tactical low level flight: It cracked his helmet on the way out at 480 KTAS, but he survived it with a minor headache and a new reputation as an iron-skulled badass. Any of these could have ended up differently without our helmets.

As for the bird going through the prop, all that 'blood, guts, and feathers' still retain nearly all of their original mass, moving at the speed of our forward velocity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--XhLJMzRB4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVq3dfDDFKY
I wear my helmet during formation flying specifically because I an NOT clearing for birds (and north Texas turkey buzzards are so large they ought to be ADS-B participants).

A helmet is just a tool, with specific purposes. It is not a panacea, but it is still a very useful safety tool.
 
I have always been under the impression that wearing a good flight helmet would go a long ways in saving your butt if you had a high G impact and crash.

But, there is evidence that a helmet really won't do that much for you. Two recent crashes, a T-51 and a P-51, illustrate the point.

Both crashes were fatal. In one case, the pilot was wearing a helmet. It did not save him.

In the P-51, the passenger died from the impact. He was not wearing a helmet, but the UK authorities stated in the accident report that a helmet would not have saved him.

So...what real good is a helmet? Unless your are a biker, then it makes a lot of sense.
You have to look at the flight profile and typical crash profile for the plane and the particular operation you're going to be conducting.

In my banner flying days, we wore helmets. Banner planes fly slow, which means they tend to crash slow. In that game, its often not the crash that kills you, its the post crash fire or over water its the post crash sinking. And banner planes (supercubs, pawnees, citabrias etc) tend to have lots of metal tubing very close to your head. So in that world the thinking for a crash scenario was if you can stay awake, you can probably stay alive. Banging your helmet against all that tubing during a hard landing/crash is much more desirable than banging your head against it.

P51's are fast airplanes and they tend to have very different typical flight profiles than banner planes. So the chances of a helmet making a difference are probably much smaller.

That being said, if I were regularly pushing the motor to the edges of its envelope at low altitude in something like a P51, I'd probably wear a helmet anyway. It might not help, but it ain't gonna hurt and you never know when you could find yourself on the ground alive in a bent burning airplane that you need to get out of. In that scenario, being awake is key and a helmet can really help with that.

I will also say that although I never had to put a banner plane down off airport, my helmet that I wore every day on that gig is riddled deep gashes from getting thrown around in rough air during tows. Every one of those deep gashes could have been my head. My banner flying days are long behind me, but if I were to do that again, I would not even consider doing it with a helmet.
 
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In a generalized torso major trauma impact, no, a helmet won't do much for you. It would appear that the best argument is the one made here, being awake and able to extract yourself from the burning wreckage.
 
Halo headset

I wonder if the low profile of Halo headset types make easier to modify helmets too. Seems like that would allow less modifications.
 
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