Hi,

So at work in industry, we just started seeing ANR headsets that connect to our handheld radios via Bluetooth. They are pretty slick and let us work without annoying wires to our headsets as well as adding cool features like suppressing background noise but amplifying voices. It makes for a strange work environment when you can hear the pipefitters swearing at a stuck bolt next to 1000hp motor running at 2500rpm.

I like the headsets so much I was thinking of buying one and trying to adapt it to that aircraft intercom. So, after a bit of google searching I am surprised that there doesn't seem to be a GA plug to Generic Bluetooth adapter. I know Lightspeed and Bose have their own proprietary ones for their specific headsets but nothing that sends and receives the audio to a generic device.

Has anybody been down this road?

Disclaimer: I obviously won't rely on some mick mouse amazon Bluetooth adapter as my only mode of radio communication. But when I'm ski flying with a crew, having a Bluetooth headset on to hop out and kick a ski will be nice!

Thanks
Marshall

It will be interesting to see if someone has been down this road. Something like the hard hat mounted 3M Peltor could be a slick solution for those that want a helmet mount option.

Welcome to the wonderful land of research and development. There are plenty of Generic Bluetooth adapters on the market from $5.00 Chinese junk on up to whatever you are willing to pay, but none of them are going to have the correct impedances to work with aircraft radios. That means you will have to design and build you own matching circuits for the mic and receive audio input/output lines on whatever you buy. I've made some adapters to run MP3 audio into an aircraft headset out of a cheap simple audio transformer from Radio Shack that work nice, but never been able to match a mic circuit to anything and get good results. I've heard of guys matching the mic circuit from a David Clark headset to an I-phone using an op-amp chip, but I don't have any specifics about how it was actually done. Good luck.

I don't really understand (i'm kinda dense that way) Do you mean something like this typically worn by EMS types?

https://tigerperformance.com/aviation/a ... -headsets/

I assume that or something similar is what he's referring to. There are several models of those on the market, the Bluetooth interface is generic on them, but all the ones I have seen are used on a commercial portable radio. The radio has a model specific Bluetooth adapter that mounts on the radio's speaker/mic jack. There are multiple Bluetooth adapters available that will connect those headsets to your car audio system, or a firetruck intercom, but I have not found any that will work on aircraft radios because the mic standard (600 Ohm carbon mic or electrical equivalent) has not changed since it was adapted by the Army Air Corp. If there is anything out there, I expect it to be expensive.

Thanks for the info, I fell down the internet rabbit hole and identified a few issues:

Bluetooth is a single antenna system, therefore most Bluetooth adapters have transmit only restrictions - meaning they will send audio to the earphones but won't receive the mic audio. They usually have a microphone built into the transmitter to pick up the voice in the car as a work around.

There is another work around:
Full Duplex Bluetooth that alternates transmit and receive functions to give the impression that its two way communication. Bandwidth is restricted and both devices need to be configured to follow that same standard. It is also not very common. Typically used in motorcycle intercoms where the transceiver and headset are sold as a pair ands therefore can follow whatever protocols they want.

My suspicion on how industrial headsets overcome these issues is that they only require the Mic when the radios PTT button is pressed. Therefore the handheld stays in transmit mode to broadcast to the earphones, when the PPT is pressed it switches to receive. This is slightly different then in an aircraft with an intercom where the squelch picks up any noise above a threshold and puts it on the earphone.

I have reached out to the headset manufacture to see if the will share some info about the Bluetooth technology they are using but I'm not optimistic. I could attempt to duplicate what the handheld does with the PTT button but it would mean the system would be incompatible with the intercom.

As for the Impendence issue, I will go down that rabbit hole some other day.

I am still surprised that 10 years ago people where walking around with the wireless earpieces matrix style talking on their phones but we still need a $1000 headset to get rid of the wires in 2021.

Anyway I will see where this leads me, maybe to NORDO.

I think JASC Avionics makes some wireless Bluetooth headset adapters....maybe they have an answer

This must have been discontinued:

https://www.lightspeedaviation.com/news ... n-headset/

hamer wrote:This must have been discontinued:

https://www.lightspeedaviation.com/news ... n-headset/

Thats to bad. I have 2 sets and love them.