Agrajag

The bluetooth does sound cool (no pun intended). My plan was to get the Pilot ANR because I wasn'tsure I was going to keep flying. Then, if I do keep flying and when I can convince the missus or one of the kids to start flying with me then I would upgrade and they could use the hand-me-down ) As far as using the phone or even listening to an MP3 player goes, from my reading we are not supposed to use em. Can be very handy in an emergency though of course! I have been doing some longer navs lately and my ears start hurting sometimes so maybe the more expensive ones are the way to go. I do have a rather big head (physically! )), I will need to play with them to see if I can loosten them up more. Wait until you tell her you want to buy an aircraft ) Steven.

Two of my instructors that I talked headsetw with have $1,500+ Bose headsets and both seemed to think of them as being 'ordinary' and 'way too expensive for what you get' so there is certainly a lot of conflicting info out there. The reason I picked the Pilot ANR was because a, it was cheap, b, it's passive filtering was comparible to most non-ANR headsets. This meant (to me) that if the battery/ANR died then I have an at least 'average to good' passive headset. I will have to try to remember to listen out for engine noise on Sunday because I can truthfully say that I have only ever noticed the noise once and that was when I misplaced the ANR unit (I soon forgot about it though). So, it can't be working too badly! Certainly better than the loaners. Build quality seems good with the only negative being that if you have the ear-cup tensioner too lose you may need to fiddle with if for a couple of seconds to put it on straight. It is hard to describe the issue but for me it is minor. I have only had them for about 10 hours of flying time so they are still pretty new but they haven't fallen apart yet. ) Really, if I had the spare $$$ I would probably have gone with Zulus myself but at over triple the price and the missus breathing down my neck, nah. ) The only ones I have read fairly consistantly bad things about were the Denali (spelling?) brand. They didn't seem to be very robust though by consistant I mean maybe 4 or 5 messages/reviews. Not a lot. You have to be careful with reviews if they are a bit old and of course, try to cross reference the reviews opinion with other sources... I wish we could try em before we buy em!

I use a Pilot PA18-50 ANR Headset. $495 from http://www.downunderpilotshop.com.au/Avtive_Noise_Reduction_ANR_Headsets-title0-p-1-c-31.html. It has decent passive protection plus ANR for that extra little bit of quiet. I lost my little ANR box at the airfield once so I was glad that it had decent passive attenuation! I did end up finding it again so I am going to find a way to clamp it to the cord semi-permanently so I don't leave it on the wing again. ) Steven.