A new and innovative ultralight headset that can be seen on the Terma stand (C232) is gaining support among airline and corporate aircraft pilots, following its certification in the wake of trials last year.

The patented microphone developed by Tbone Aviation does not register sound waves traveling through the air, but instead picks up the vibrations from the user’s head as they speak. This concept eliminates the microphone boom completely, resulting in an extremely compact design, which focuses on comfort and safety.

Each earpiece is individually sculptured and molded to fit the user’s ear to ensure optimum comfort and perfect hold. Such a perfect fit ensures excellent protection from the ambient noise in the cockpit, but acoustic filters in the headset allow human voices to bypass the noise protection so that other crew members can be heard.

Trials with such carriers as Delta Air Lines and Maersk Air showed that the use of an oxygen mask becomes much easier and, as the microphone picks up speech from the user’s head, the usual breathing noises are eliminated. Also, as Delta’s Captain Len Goreham remarked, “The coffee tastes much better without the microphone!”