Originally Posted by
FlyingJman
New-ish guy on the guppy... seems about 1/2 of the captains I fly with use headsets. I use a Bose noise cancelling headset, which works great with the guys that also wear something... the ones that don't are sometimes really hard to hear. Anyone else think the same thing? I just flew a 1 day turn with a guy who I could barely hear mumbling over there in the left seat. I brought my concern up to him repeatedly... but it was like pulling teeth to get him to speak up.
I've looked in the SOPs for something addressing the use of hot mic... I couldn't find anything... am I missing it? This seems like it's potentially a safety issue. I certainly felt my ability to be fully aware of what was going on was affected during the flight with my quite talker. Thoughts?
It's not a matter of that's the way we always do/did it. You'll notice that most guys don't want to use the Dave Clark head clamps and most don't want an ear dick in the ear all flight. Most guys will take the ear piece and mic off at 18,000 - which is ok with FOM.
Maybe a good ear cleaning is in order. You may want to keep asking "what" when flying with a "low talker" but when you wear a headset that decreases his volume it's your fault not his.
Some of the dumbest one sided conversation I've ever heard on ATC have been the result of a hot mic - don't see a real need.