Lightspeed Zulu

[Brantel]

Just ordered one on the upgrade plan. Sure hope all these good reviews are accurate!

Strange thing on the upgrade... They gave me $200 credit for a ~$150 headset that is 5 years old....

[N282S]

Originally Posted by 9GT

I just took advantage of their upgrade offer for the second time and traded in my wifes 15 XL for another Zulu. She doesn't know it yet but it will be a pleasant surprise for her when we get in the plane in a few weeks for a planed trip to the Outer Banks.

I used my "own" Zulu and let the wife use the 20xl. One day her batteries died and I said, "here wear mine while I replace yours." She wouldn't give me back my Zulu. Wanted to know how much they cost. "Oh, I got a really great deal on a trade in!" "Well, I want one too." Good girl!

Now she has her own Zulu and I have matching headsets in my 7. Oh yeah! Life is good.

[Kyle Boatright]

A bit of a necropost here, but I thought I'd put my thoughts into an established Zulu thread.

I'm using the upgrade program to trade my Lightspeed 25XL's for a set of Zulus. After a few hours with the Zulus, here are my observations:

- Noticiably quieter. Not the huge difference I experienced going from non-ANR DC knock-off's to the 25XL's but they are quieter.

- They are lighter and less bulky. They also sit lower, giving me another inch or so of clearance to the canopy. This is good and bad. My head bumps the canopy less frequently, but in turbulence, there is an extra inch to accelerate before your head whacks the canopy - ouch!

- They have significantly more volume at a given intercom setting. On my old XL's I had to keep the volume controls on the headsets all the way up. On the Zulu's, half volume is about right.

I experienced a couple of issues that I resolved through Lightspeed's tech support line:

- I have a polarity problem with my mic jacks that is only apparent using late model Lightspeeds (My 25XL's were not impacted). I get a squeal in the headsets under certain conditions. There is a dip switch setting in the Zulu's brain box that addresses this problem.

- With the Zulus, there was a consistant hum in the headsets if the intercom was on. This didn't exist with my other headsets. Again, there is a dip switch setting (the #5 switch, set to "off", IIRC) that fixed that problem.

I commented to the Lightspeed tech support folks that they need a better set of instructions for dip switch settings. The user's manual, including the portion on dip switch settings, didn't address either of the settings that needed to be changed on my headsets.

In the end, I'm very pleased with the upgrade. Why did I upgrade now? Because (according to Lightspeed) some of the critical replacement parts on my 25XL's are no longer available. Given that those headsets seemed to need a biannual visit to the factory for repairs, I didn't want to be out in the cold the next time they failed.

[rjtjrt]

Kyle
I have had a squeel in my Zulu's that is intermittent but so bad that you cannot hear ATC coms for a couple of seconds. So much so that I stopped using my Zulu's many months ago.
Can you give details of how you sorted out the squeel?
I would like to get it sorted so I can use them again.
Regards
John

[Kyle Boatright]

Originally Posted by rjtjrt

Kyle
I have had a squeel in my Zulu's that is intermittent but so bad that you cannot hear ATC coms for a couple of seconds. So much so that I stopped using my Zulu's many months ago.
Can you give details of how you sorted out the squeel?
I would like to get it sorted so I can use them again.
Regards
John

Open up the battery pack, remove the batteries, and locate the dip switches. Check to see which ones are in the "on" setting. In my case, switching the #3 dip switch to "off" fixed the squeal. Setting the #5 switch to off fixed the background hum.

A toothpick or a pen cap works well to move the dip switches.

If those solutions don't work, call Lightspeed. They have a very helpful group in tech support.