Headsets

On the verge of extinction nearly 10 years ago, the standalone navcomm radio barely soldiers on today. While there are few choices for new ones (there’s a much larger market for standalone comm radios), a navcomm installation could make sense for basic panels and for advanced ones to back up a GPS. Hang on to your wallet. If the panel hasnt seen a radio upgrade in a while, you could shell out more money than you anticipated to upgrade the antenna system and gut out old wiring.

While I was recently shopping at BestBuy for a wireless music speaker, a salesperson who arbitrarily remarked that Bose was the best got me thinking about pilots shopping for premium aviation headsets, a market dominated by Bose and also Lightspeed for as long as I can remember. While Bose may be the most recognizable name in both the consumer audio and aviation headset markets, don’t forget that Lightspeed Aviation was a major force in shifting the market from passive to active noise cancelling headsets in the early 1990s.

I read the portable oxygen concentrator article in the June 2017 Aviation Consumer with interest because my wife has a lung deficiency and has needed O2 when we fly above 6000 feet. We have been using the Aerox system, but she says it dries her nose.

Although piston aircraft sales are mostly in the tank, Diamond Aircraft came to the Aero show in Germany this past spring announcing not one, but three new single-engine piston models to be designated the DA50. It has its competitive sights directly on Cirrus.

Altitude encoders are the doorstops of the avionics world. You have to have one, but don’t expect a sweep through the list of available hardware to yield impressive lists of features and capabilities. After all, all the gadgets do is electronically deliver altitude data to a transponder that then reports your altitude to ATC-Mode C.

There are good reasons to make oxygen available at altitudes less than those recommended by the FAA. Face it, unless youre using a pulse oximeter on every flight (we certainly don’t when flying at lower altitudes), you don’t really know how your physiology is reacting on a given day. We think blood oxygen saturation is an important biometric to keep on top of.

Is there a value proposition in an airplane that cruises two-thirds as fast as a near million-dollar Cirrus, uses only one-quarter the fuel and costs one-fifth as much? The Bristell LSA, an Eastern European import were examining here, certainly tests the notion. Like the Tecnam Astore we reviewed in the January 2017 issue, the Bristell NG5 stretches the slow-simple-cheap ethos of the light sport airplane to the breaking point. Given its sophisticated avionics, high cruising speed and attention to interior and baggage space, the Bristell is clearly conceived as a high-end traveling machine, not a bump-around-the-pattern flivver.

Back in the day-as in 1939-the Ercoupe was designed to be exceptionally safe by making it resistant to stalls and spins. But the airplane racked up a number of firsts, including being the first successful production GA airplane that had a nosewheel, plus a fully cowled engine. This contributed to more speed than most of its counterparts had. Better yet, an Ercoupe can handle a crosswind of twice the velocity that can be dealt with by almost any other airplane.

When L-3 introduced the Lynx NGT9000 multifunction ADS-B transponder in 2015, we nearly dismissed it for all but the highest-end applications. With a starting price that put it we’ll north of ten grand, the NGT9000 seemed like a questionable investment for buyers looking for an affordable path to ADS-B compliance.

On paper, Faro Aviations $689 flagship G3 ANR headset hits all of the required high points to go the distance. Its lightweight, loaded with features and has a good warranty. We flew with the G3 Carbon for a few months to see how it compared with the rest of the models in our long-term evaluation pool of ANR models. Heres a summary.

One perk of the job is trying out a wide variety of headsets. Two models that impressed me enough to fork over my own cash to own are the Bose A20 and the Clarity Aloft in-ear headset. In fact, I like the Clarity so much I find myself flying with it more than the Bose. Thats why I was anxious to try the new Air in-ear model from Las Vegas, Nevada-based Faro Aviation. Company principal Kevin Faro has been designing a series of aviation headsets since 1999, the result of his dissatisfaction with other headsets on the market. The company currently offers four models, to include the $190 passive G2, a $390 ANR version of the G2, the $690 flagship G3 and the $390 Air. Ive been flying with the Air for nearly a month, while also offering it up to passengers and other pilots to try. Heres a field report.

During our research, we asked static wick manufacturers about ICAW procedures (instructions for continued airworthiness) and all noted that aside from a preflight visual inspection, its important to look for signs of corrosion where the wick attaches to the skin. Additionally, you’ll want to inspect the tips. Testing rarely happens on the shop level.