Record Comms In Flight
 

I was wondering if anyone on here knew of a way to record whats said on the mic and the ATC comms while in flight? I will have a place for an extra headset/mic jack to plug it into. The audio will go right into a video camera's mic input.

The way you talk about sounds like it should work perfectly. Whats the problem with that plan?

I don't know if there is a FAR against plugging any recording equipment into the aircraft. Just some food for thought because nobody wants to break a FAR. :)

Anyhow, on the military side of things, Uncle Sam uses a different plug. In order to connect directly, you need some fancy converters. But there is a simple fix and would apply to your situation.

Get yourself some in-the-ear earphones (the small kind). Plug then into the mic jack of your recorder. Connect a headset to the aircraft and turn the volume up on the headest/audio. Place the ear pieces (which will be acting like microphones and not speakers) inside the ears of the headset. Cover the headset cups with tape, leaving the an ear piece inside.

The ear pieces will record the audio and it works surprisingly well.

-Fatty

I'm not too sure if a standard aviation plug size to a standard 3.5MM plug size will work properly. IIRC, the way the aviation headset works is completly different than a regular headset. I believe the speakers were like amplified or something, and the mic had to be powered from the plane.

I don't think there would be any regulation regarding it as I am not going into the elctronics itself. I would pretty much be plugging a recorder into the headset jack as it would record what I say along with that the ATC says, so it would not be transmissing anything.

I'll be a CFI soon, and I was looking to use this as a way for new students to get some audio recordings of inflight comms to learn about it, or it will allow them to listen to their flight and how they did after the flight to reflect back upon it.

Wow, I had no idea. The mic getting power from the plane makes sense. Its a good idea, good luck on making it work. Please let us know, I might want to try it with my students :D.

I had a student that would record every flight from before start-up to after shutdown. I think he had some adaptor that was inline of his headset, because we didn't exactly have extra plug's in the C152. I'm sorry I can't be of much more help, but this guy got it figured out, so it can be done.

Probably not what you're looking for, but I know the G1000 has a playback button. It's a pretty cool feature, and a good way to take care of missed radio calls if you happened to miss one.