music adapter for two headsets?

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Stephan E.

Filing Flight Plan
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Jan 27, 2010
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Stephan E.
Hi

I'll be doing some cross-country flying in the states in July. For the longer legs I would love to have some music from my iphone on my headsets. The thing is, that I have two requirements that should be met: first, the music should autmatically fade away when ATC comes on and second, the music should be delivered to two headsets from the same source.

I have searched the net and I've been in contact with some dealers but nobody seems to have such a device. Either it's connected directly to the headsets (simple "cable-solution"), i.e. not through intercom and therefore doesn't fade away or it goes through intercom but then only delivers to one headset... (e.g. BluLink and others).

Does anyone of you have an idea or even a solution? (btw, I fly a Cessna 172 with david clark headsets).

Best regards from Switzerland
Stephan
 
Hmmm. I don't know of anything that'll do exactly what you want.

PS Engineering audio panels do the fade-out thing, but you'd have to be flying a plane with a PS Engineering audio panel and the music input wired up.

Portable intercoms could do the trick, but I don't know of any of them that fade out for ATC.

Finally, if you were using Lightspeed headsets instead of the David Clarks, you could simply purchase a 2-way headphone splitter for about $4 and plug your iPhone into both of them - The Lightspeeds will fade the music for ATC on their own.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Finally, if you were using Lightspeed headsets instead of the David Clarks, you could simply purchase a 2-way headphone splitter for about $4 and plug your iPhone into both of them - The Lightspeeds will fade the music for ATC on their own.
Click to expand...

Is this just the Zulu that does this? I have the Lightspeed QFR that has a cell phone/mp3 interface, but it doesn't fade out with ATC.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Okay I lied. I decided to look and see if PS Engineering had finally come out with a portable audio panel, and... Hooray, they did! :goofy:

So, this is what you want: http://www.ps-engineering.com/aerocom.shtml
Click to expand...

I love our PS Engineering audio panel, but it's an older model without the auto-mute on the aux input. We also don't have the auto-squelch, so as cabin noise goes up, different headset mics can pop the squelch open if someone points an air vent at their face, etc. I find myself "fiddling" with the pax squelch a bit as the noise level in the cabin changes.

I just use a long cord to hook up the iPod/iPhone where our Aux jack is installed on the pax side, and keep the device's mute button handy. I also keep the various audio levels set such that the tunes are never "overpowering" the ATC radio.

If things get really wild I can throw the Isolate switch and I'll have only the ATC stuff and nothing else on board coming to my headset. Our aux jack seems to NOT be on the Aux input, and I've never traced the pins to see where/why they did it this way, but it's "always active". I think the previous owner wanted a place to plug his Aviation handheld, since there's also an antenna interrupter of the old bayonette-connector variety for a very old (not available anymore) King HT, and the rest of the panel is King. (Someone was a King fan, which doesn't bother me a bit. They work great.)

Tunes are nice on long XCs, but never "primary" of course. I often hit the pause and never get around to turning 'em back on, when things get busy, or just don't even hook the stuff up at all, during shorter flights. Over the southern Colorado - New Mexico area where "RADAR Contact Lost, expect RADAR contact again in 30 minutes" is common at my speeds and altitudes, it's sure nice though. Things get pretty quiet out West here sometimes. ;)

Long XCs are also a great time to catch up on the multitude of Aviation podcasts. :)
 
Radio Flyer said:
Is this just the Zulu that does this? I have the Lightspeed QFR that has a cell phone/mp3 interface, but it doesn't fade out with ATC.
Click to expand...

I think it's only the ANR's. I'm not sure what the QFR has for electronics, but if you don't have to replace batteries, you probably don't have power to power an auto-mute circuit.

The QFR's are also a pretty old design - I think they've been out longer than I've been flying, which is approaching 10 years.

I think Ted has an XLc (which came out between the QFR's and the 3G's IIRC), maybe he can enlighten us as to whether it has the soft-mute function.
 
I've got a headphone jack wired up to my Garmin 340 labeled "Comm 3" it won't fade when ATC starts talking, but it doesn't play very loud so I can still hear them.
 
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