My very own headset: a David Clark H10-60

As mentioned in my previous post, I finally decided to buy myself a headset. I decided on a David Clark H10-60. I bought it online from SkyGeek in the US and got it shipped to Australia, which saved me about $150 compared to the cheapest Australian pilot shop. To put things in perspective, that’s one hour of solo flying in the C152!

For the selection process, I first proceeded by elimination. Since I expect this headset to last me for many years, there was no point skimping on quality. This took care of some of the cheaper brands such as Altronics and Flightcom.

On the other hand, the price of some of the top-of-the-range General Aviation headsets is so incredibly high that it borders on the ridiculous. I’m sure they are all fantastic pieces of technology, especially headsets such as the Bose-X. If I ever end up with a career in aviation I think I’ll go for one of these. But not now.

I also looked at recent expensive headsets such as the Lightspeed Zulu. The ad calls it “the world’s quietest ANR headset”. It may be true, but with a price tag well over $1000 it’ll be some time before I have one in my flight bag. It’s a pity, because it has some very nice features, such as the possibility of plugging in any mobile phone with a “hand-free” feature. This may come in very handy in flight for obtaining weather reports and forecasts, checking availability of fuel or simply letting people know everything’s OK (or not, depending).

To make a long story short, I decided in the end to go for a David Clark headset. The brand has a good reputation and good worldwide service, and all the people I asked around me were very positive about this company’s products. I also found a lot of good feedback about them on pprune. Going through their list of products, I narrowed down my choice to two models, the H20-10 and the H10-60.

In the end I decided on the H10-60. I didn’t like the look of the H20-10, especially the abundance of green plastic and the squarish shape of the ear cups. From the technical description both headsets sounded comparable. My only concern was weight. The H10-60 is nearly a hundred grams heavier than the H20-10, which can make a big difference on a long flight. I couldn't find any decent comparison of General Aviation headsets online that would go beyond listing the characteristics given by the manufacturer. I could find some useful anecdotal information here and there, but that's about as useful as the Internet was in the selection process.

After considering all these different trade-offs, I decided to go for the H10-60. Now that the selection was over, the next challenge was to find where to buy it from.

I had a look at the Web sites of all the Australian pilot shops I could find. I looked at SkySupply, Airsupport, Concept Aviation, AeroShop, the Downunder Pilot Shop, Skylines, Ozpilot and SkyShop. SkySupply clearly came ahead of the pack with a price tag of $490. The other two shops that offered the model were Airsupport at $630 and the Downunder Pilot Shop at $650.

Since most headsets are manufactured in the US, why not try to order directly from there? The US are a larger market than Australia, and with lower taxes, so American pilot stores such as Sportys and SkyGeek may have a better deal. SkyGeek turned out to be the cheapest, with a price tag of US$ 314. The headset carrying bag was an extra US$ 16, and the shipping cost was only about US$ 20 with the Fedex Economy option.

I ordered from SkyGeek and I received the headset and its carrying bag one week later. All was in perfect condition, and the grand total was US$ 352. In Australian dollars I was charged exactly $409. Quite a good deal in the end, I saved about $150. It sounds to me as if the Australian pilot shops took advantage of the fall of the US dollar vs. the Aussie dollar but didn’t exactly pass on the savings to their customers. I mean, why charge $48 in Australia for the exact same headset bag sold at the equivalent of $17 in the US? That’s nearly three times the price.

The David Clark carrying bag is very good, must better than the ones usually given away for free with cheaper headsets. It is made of very sturdy fabric and has three pockets, including one zipped one. In the zipped pocket I have space for my pilot license, ASIC card, wallet, car keys, mobile phone, etc. The other two pockets are great for holding a couple of pens, the local VTC and a few sheets of paper or cereal bars if need be. That’s the only bag I take when I go on local flights.


The headset itself is amazing. The gel ear seals work really well, even with sunglasses on. The headband is easy to adjust and doesn’t move. The mike stays perfectly in place. The volume controls on top of each earcup are easy to find. And you can’t even feel the weight of the headset on the top of your head. OK, I’ve only used the headset for about one hour at a time so far, so we’ll see how it behaves on longer flights. But I'm pretty confident I'll keep on calling it my very own awesome headset for many years.

Common problems with loaned general aviation headsets

Ever since I joined the Redcliffe Aero Club in March last year, I’ve been borrowing a headset each time I went flying. The club has a number of basic headsets that students can use for free during lessons, most of them of the Altronics brand. They are regularly maintained and even replaced, and they usually do the job.


I grew a bit frustrated with those headsets over the last few months though. The most common problem I experienced was with the mike boom not staying in place correctly. The mike book is the part of the headset that connects the microphone to one of the ear cups. It is usually either a hinged wire frame assembly or a flexible metal tube that can be bent so that the microphone sits just a few millimetres from the lips (the so-called “flex boom assembly”). What happens over time is that screws on the wire frame get loose, the flex tube develops a tendency to move back to its original position, or the linkage between the mike boom and the ear cup comes apart and pops out, leaving the mike boom dangling.

As a result, the mike invariably ends up moving away from my lips, which means that people on the receiving side of my radio communications experience a fainter voice and a lot more noise, i.e. a very badly degraded signal-to-noise ratio. So that’s all not very optimal.

Typically, with such a faulty headset, I would need to use my left hand to push the mike closer to my lips when making a radio call. This is not ideal in the circuit since the best practice is to make calls during turns and not after or before. This is to maximize the chance of other aircrafts sighting us. Other pilots will look for us when they hear the call (“turning base”, “turning final”, etc.), and they’re most likely to see us if we maximize the cross-section of the plane that they can see, i.e. if we are banked.

Therefore, with one hand holding the mike near my lips, that leaves only one hand for the yoke, throttle, trim and flaps. In most cases this works fine since flaps, throttle and trim are set before or after the turn. But you get the idea. It seems wrong to have my left hand busy with the “communicate” thing while both hands could be used for the “aviate” thing. In addition, it is quite disruptive when trying to have a conversation with the instructor. Try that when adjusting power in a turn and you’ll realise you need to grow a third hand. Or get your own headset.

There are a few other problems I’ve found with headsets that have seen too many hours, too many students and too many planes. On one occasion, I had one of the two jack plugs slightly come out of the socket. That was the thick one, the one connected to the speakers in my headset. I think it was helped by my right knee nudging against it, but I also suspect it was caused by wear and tear of the plug. As a result, the instructor could hear me, but I couldn’t hear him. It happened during the roll on a touch-and-go, and I realised something was wrong when Mal reached for the carby heat and firmly pushed it in.

The story was that we were practicing crosswind circuits and I had forgotten to remove carby heat on final, most likely because I was busy with all those things that keep you busy in a crosswind final. After I applied full power for take-off, Mal shouted “carby heat, carby heat” at me but I couldn’t hear him, and I can understand he got a bit cranky on this one as the end of the runway was approaching. On the climb-out we sorted out what the problem was and realized the plug was a few millimetres out.

Another thing that happened to me during training lessons was that the headband came lose and changed position in flight. Before each lesson I took time as part of the pre-flight routine to adjust the headband and make sure it felt comfortable with my sunglasses on. Still, one ear cup would drop at some point, which would force me to hand over the controls to the instructor while I was putting the headset and my sunglasses back in place. Not the kind of thing you want to be bothered with when you’re trying to make the most of a training flight.

Comfort is another problem with “best value” headsets. Last September I went on a one-week air safari from Redcliffe to Ayers Rock, for which we spent about 30 hours in the plane. I’ll talk more about this trip in future posts. For the time being, let’s just say that after 4 to 5 hours in the plane each day I had the impression that the headset had grown spikes that were slowly making their way through my skull. Granted, I do not have much hair to offer as a cushion between the headset band and my skull. But still, a nice cushion around the headband would have been nice.

So, little by little, I made up my mind about buying my own headset sooner rather than later. I had in mind to buy one after I got my GFPT as a gift to myself, so why not now rather than in two months? According to what I heard and read, proper GA headsets can last decades if properly taken care of, so delaying that purchase did not make sense. I ended up buying a pair of David Clark H10-60 which I find absolutely awesome. This post is getting a bit long now, I’ll go through the details of the selection and purchasing process in the next post.