almost as bad as smacking gum so loud it keys the mic. How does a grown adult smack their gum like that, and not know it?

 

They're too laser focused on clipping their toenails?

 

Hey Mulligan. I see many people wearing these, and I'm really curious how they go with the whole on ear situation. Does the ANC work as well as a wraparound set? Are they still comfortable to wear for hours at a time? I'm definitely not the topless type.

The people who wear the shipsets sometimes complain that they can't hear me with my current setup, notwithstanding the fact that they are making a conscious choice to blow out their own eardrums, do you get any complaints about being hard to hear?

 

Man they’re great. The ANC is just as quiet as the full ear ones. I like to put one on the ear and the other off for taxi so can hear the engine starts and the captain talking since they all predominantly wear the ship headset and you can’t hear them because they’re basically just talking with no headset on. About the 3 hr mark though I don’t like wearing a headset at all. The Bluetooth can be turned on to cut out with ATC or to play continuously but I hardly ever use it unless on a red eye and it’s dead quiet on ATC. I just found I was missing radio calls on the ground with the telex and needed to be sharper with that so I use them 100% of the time now. They fold up and fit in my EFB bag. Batteries last a couple months before I have to replace them. Also DC has great customer service. My wires were loose and sent it in and they completely refurbished the headset. Had to use the ship headset then and yikes won’t go back.

 

Just took my new UFQ’s for a trip. Very comfortable. Very light. Comparable to the Clarity Alofts in those regards. Noise cancelling was excellent. My biggest quibble is the excess of wires. Both the headset wires and the wires to the earbuds are excessively long and lead to a bit of a tangled mess when getting them out of the case.

 

The difficulty is how the culture demands topless at 18. It's been years since I last flew with somebody who wanted to stick with headsets the whole flight. Why invest in a $500-1000 headset only to use it below 18?

All the complaints are valid. Maxing out the intercom to barely make out what the other dude is saying. Missed calls in cruise. Long term hearing loss... But as long as 99% of our pilot group pulls them off after setting standard, what can you do?

 

Keep them on? I wear 850s, and looking at 8+ or dcx. Normally to TOC & from TOD. Wear plugs in cruise. If you want to wear yours, ill keep mine on too.

 

Have some stones and tell the other pilot you’d like to keep them on a bit longer or throw on some ear plugs as suggested or slow the climb. I fly with 3-4 pilots a year who want to wear it the whole time. I usually keep mine on until the indicated is below 280 knots. And put them on early if we have a high CI on the way down. I’ve never gotten pushback or side eyes for that.

You don’t get your hearing back. Ever.

BTW, my UFQ’s were $300. $200 if you get the PNR version.

 

Yeah, or you can grab the new Bose ones and just pop out either the one side or decrease the NC on that side only. I find it funny that everyone wants to go topless and immediately blasts the speakers and comm volume, at which point we spend the entire flight trying to fine tune it from deafening blasts to missing calls. These planes are not as quite as everything thinks they are.

 

Then again they aren’t TSO certified, so technically not approved per the Spirit FOM. So there is that.

The TSO process isn’t cheap, and thus why CA and Bose are much more expensive. I use Bose PF2 and love them, FO is free to lose theirs at 18, mine stay on. I wish I had been as concerned about my hearing when I was younger and I wouldn’t have as much hearing loss as I do now. At this rate I’ll likely need hearing aids before I retire. $1k is nothing to protect your hearing, I’d pay 10x that to get my hearing back to when I was young.