How can I make these work in general aviation?

[BHunt]

I fly for the Air Force and had a set of these made for me. http://www.westone.com/hhc/index.php/about/military . Is there any way to make these work in a GA aircraft?

Brad

[penguin]

GA radios and intercoms are expecting to drive headphone speakers with an impedance of 600 ohms, where as most 'ipod' type headphones are around 8 to 20 ohms. If you were to hook up these ear buds to a GA radio it would be very loud, distorted or blow the speakers!

It may be possible to use a simple resistor to drop some of the power being produced by the radio - I'm looking into the possibility for a similar application. It would be good to know what the resistance of your ear-buds is (use a regular ohm-meter). I assume you have stereo buds? Do you have a 3.5mm connector on the end, or can you get a converter lead?

Pete

[pierre smith]

Hi Brad,

This subject was just discussed on our Crop-dusters united page in Facebook and here's what one pilot had to say:

"Forget about the ANR, Racing Electronics in Concord NC can install a plug in your helmet and with a quick trip to an audiologist to get ear molds, can create a set of molds with transducers in them, better than ANR and super comfortable".

We too, work in a hostile, noisy environment since our ag airplanes have zero insulation.

Best,

[Walt]

If required: Impedance matching transformer from David Clark

[AX-O]

Originally Posted by BHunt

I fly for the Air Force and had a set of these made for me. http://www.westone.com/hhc/index.php/about/military . Is there any way to make these work in a GA aircraft?

Brad

Yes. This is what I did. I called Westone and spoke to one of the engineers regarding the differences in military and GA impedance. He explained to me that yes the difference is there however it should not affect the CEPs. So I decided to give it a try. I took an H10-60 David Clark headset apart, bought the CEP hookup and made the mods to my helmet. You can also make the mod to your headset (check for intructions on their webpage).

H10-60 drawing:


This is the drawing I made.


This is the outcome.






I fly with a Bose headset sometimes and with the helmet the other times. I don't change the aduio level on my intercomm or headset/helmet at all from one to another (the helmet also has volume control just like the headset). Non of my buds know the difference when they hear me over the radio. All that being said, the noise cancelling headset is still a little better than the helmet and the CEP combo. Good luck to you if you decide to do it. Took me about 1.5 hours to figure out and do.

[sahrens]

CEP-USA has instructions on their website for civilian applications. You can print out the installation guide here http://www.cep-usa.com/cep/civil-aviation