Grind

I'm finding it difficult to write interesting posts lately about our flying.  Most of it is flying long lines across empty blue seas for a half hour at a time.  We get excited if we see one boat in a 4 hour flight.  Even while focusing on the precision flying some days we have to fight to stay awake.  The hot sun beats into the cockpit and it there is nothing interesting to look at.  Perfect time for a nap... oh wait I have to fly an airplane at 200 ft.  Thank goodness for my music I can pipe directly into my headset.

I am still loving my new Bose A20 headset.  I'm still amazed at how quiet it is.  It does such a good job at noise cancelling actually that I have a hard time syncing the props with the noise cancelling turned on.  With constant speed props (adjustable pitch propellers), you set the pitch of the prop blades by moving the prop lever which controls an RPM governor.  If you move the lever forward the governor decreases the pitch of the propeller blades, which decreases the load on the engine and therefore increases the engine RPM.  So we set the props based on certain RPMs (usually 2300 for cruise, 2400 for climbs).  With twin engine aircraft, if the props on each engine aren't spinning at exactly the same RPM you get a resonant thumping you can hear which is incredibly annoying.  So we always fine tune the RPM settings by ear until the thumping disappears into a steady drone.  With my new headset the noise cancelling completely cancels out the resonating sound so I can't tell if the props are out of sync.  It drives my partner crazy because he uses a passive headset, so I've taken to leaving my noise cancelling feature turned off for takeoff and climb until we're into cruise and I have the props set properly, and only then do I turn the noise cancelling feature on.  Its probably for the best anyway since take-off is the most critical phase of the flight, and its good to be able to hear exactly what the engine is doing.  Hearing what the engine is doing can in some cases be a far better indicator than any gauge can be.

The only complaint I have with my headset is the location of the headset controls (volume, etc).  On my old Davey Clark the volume knob was on the right ear-cup.  As a result I always knew exactly where it was, and could instantly reach up and adjust it if I needed to.  Now with the Bose, the controls on are a little pod on the headset cable.  So in order to make adjustments I have to fish around my seat and find the cable, then find the cable control pod, and then adjust it from there.  The cable comes with a couple clips on it so you can fasten the pod down to somewhere.  My jeans have a hole in the left knee, so I usually fasten one clip to the hole in my jeans, and the other clip to my belt.  That way the control panel more or less stays near my left leg.  Still not as slick as the ear cup mounted controls though, but I'll never again go back to a passive headset.