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High quality mic for Helicopter Pilot

frankberry

frankberry

Administrator
Inactive User
I'd like to add a good quality noise cancelling microphone to the boom of a David Clark headset.
This microphone will feed the Chopper's microwave transmitter and, hopefully, give me better audio quality than the David Clark mic.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
Not to piggyback on your thread - but does anyone have a thought on the best 2.5mm cell phone headset to use for a non-airborne traffic reporter?

I'm looking for something to plug right into the phone - not using a Flipjack, MicTel or any other external parts (except for maybe some adapters). Thanks for your input!
 
I would think that a clip-on, drum or brass instrument-type mic would work nicely. They are typically tight cardioids or super-cardioid and can handle plosives nicely. The capsules are shock-mounted to withstand getting hit by drum sticks. The only drawback would be that some of those require phantom power. Look at these:

Shure Beta-98 http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/WiredMicrophones/us_pro_Beta98H-C_content
AKG C518 http://www.akg.com/site/products/powerslave,id,982,pid,982,nodeid,2,_language,EN.html
Sennheiser E608 (super-cardioid) http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite/productdetail.asp?transid=004520
Audio-Technica ATM-350 http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/71d870fb398e6978/index.html
(there's a less-expensive version of this mic, the PRO35)
-D
 
I have used elements from Beyer Dynamic DT-190 Headsets on David Clark style headsets. Beyer will sell you just the parts of the mic arm so you don't have to buy a whole headset...

Test123
 
Seeking to maximize perceived quality of sound while minimizing background noise, my old pal Greg Strickland did a bit of experimentation home-brewing noise-cancelling mics for a traffic reporter in an airplane a while back, and I think he had pretty good success.

Similar to the way noise-cancelling headphones work, you collect a bit of the background sound with a separate microphone, relatively near but not too near to the reporter's main mic, and add it out of phase to the main mic. IIRC, Greg mounted the second mic right on the stem of the pilot's headphone/mic, a few inches (maybe even less) from the main mic which the reporter spoke directly into. I'm not sure how Greg managed to invert and sum the signals; perhaps an active op-amp circuit.

The mics and gains have to be identical, (a couple small omni electret capsules come to mind), and can't be too far apart or the cancellation doesn't work. And if the announcer gets too far away from the mic, some nasty comb filtering will occur. But when done right, it will really work wonders. I remember hearing Greg's result and being amazed. Having full-range frequency response, it made the competition's system sound like bad CB radio. :D

Kind Regards,
David
 
Mucho experience with the subject. This is the hot setup http://www.crownaudio.com/pdf/mics/102546.pdf . I have used it and the handheld version for gymnasium sports announcing with high dB sound systems with excellent results. Outrageous gain-before-feedback. Call it the Garth Brooks/Madonna mic if you like.

It can handle loud voice without distortion which makes it good for close use. The differoid technology has been around for a long time. A gift from the Don Davis days of the SYN-AUD-CON followers http://www.synaudcon.com/website08/about.php . I never found anything else that matched it for wideband non-proximity sound field cancelation and natural frequency response. Use it with a high-pass/low-pass filter noise gate combination. Peak the response in the presence range a little by ear to boost the intelligibility. Put the noise gate after the filters. Make sure the pre-amp has plenty of headroom so the user can speak loudly. Close-talk it with a foam windscreen.

A buddy of mine uses it in his ham shack where he has to deal with all of the squirrel cage blower fan noise of his government surplus 1 KW power amplifier. I do not detect any background noise in his single-sideband transmissions even on 60 dB agc signal level copy.

You do need phantom power for the microphone.
 
We used the Crown CM311HS, which was designed to easily attach to the Sony MDR-7506 headphones, for many pre-Olympics events....often with the users only a few feet in front of PA stacks. They worked well, except when the talent refused to wear them properly (then, they were "OK", but not great).

TV talent don't like wearing the mike's windscreen touching/almost-touching their lips, which is what makes all differential mikes work.
 
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