In flight recorder

Back when I was working as a flight test instrumentation engineer at the
USAF Test Pilot School, we were trying to figure out an easy way to
record audio. The easiest way we found, short of doing a modification
to the airplanes and including expensive flight-qualified recorders, was
to take a little audio-activated voice recorder and ran a small
microphone inside the ear cup of one of our headsets. We'd put the
small recorder in our pockets. It worked really well at catching
everything that was said through the intercom.

It's not a "fireproof" solution, but hopefully this might get you
thinking in other areas.

Rich
N734BV @ 75FL

On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 09:58 -0700, Lou wrote:

Has anyone ever made their own in-flight recorder? I'm curious how
this would be done. I don't think it would be that difficult if you
use a regular cassette in one of those small fire safes. Just
drill a small hole to accomadate the mic wire. But how would you hook
it up to the intercom?
Or would you have a small lapel mic attatched to your headset? Anyway,
has anyone tried this?
Lou

I use that technique on all my dual flights and give to the student
for review. A couple of years ago I wrote it up as an article and sent
it to AOPA Flight Training magazine, but they did not seem very
interested. Here is a copy:
http://www.sarangan.org/aviation/art...er-article.pdf


On Mar 21, 8:39 pm, Richard Turner wrote:
Back when I was working as a flight test instrumentation engineer at the
USAF Test Pilot School, we were trying to figure out an easy way to
record audio. The easiest way we found, short of doing a modification
to the airplanes and including expensive flight-qualified recorders, was
to take a little audio-activated voice recorder and ran a small
microphone inside the ear cup of one of our headsets. We'd put the
small recorder in our pockets. It worked really well at catching
everything that was said through the intercom.

It's not a "fireproof" solution, but hopefully this might get you
thinking in other areas.

Rich
N734BV @ 75FL



On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 09:58 -0700, Lou wrote:
Has anyone ever made their own in-flight recorder? I'm curious how
this would be done. I don't think it would be that difficult if you
use a regular cassette in one of those small fire safes. Just
drill a small hole to accomadate the mic wire. But how would you hook
it up to the intercom?
Or would you have a small lapel mic attatched to your headset? Anyway,
has anyone tried this?
Lou- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Mar 22, 6:54 am, "Andrew Sarangan" wrote:
I use that technique on all my dual flights and give to the student
for review. A couple of years ago I wrote it up as an article and sent
it to AOPA Flight Training magazine, but they did not seem very
interested. Here is a copy:http://www.sarangan.org/aviation/art...er-article.pdf

On Mar 21, 8:39 pm, Richard Turner wrote:

Back when I was working as a flight test instrumentation engineer at the
USAF Test Pilot School, we were trying to figure out an easy way to
record audio. The easiest way we found, short of doing a modification
to the airplanes and including expensive flight-qualified recorders, was
to take a little audio-activated voice recorder and ran a small
microphone inside the ear cup of one of our headsets. We'd put the
small recorder in our pockets. It worked really well at catching
everything that was said through the intercom.

It's not a "fireproof" solution, but hopefully this might get you
thinking in other areas.

Rich
N734BV @ 75FL

On Wed, 2007-03-21 at 09:58 -0700, Lou wrote:
Has anyone ever made their own in-flight recorder? I'm curious how
this would be done. I don't think it would be that difficult if you
use a regular cassette in one of those small fire safes. Just
drill a small hole to accomadate the mic wire. But how would you hook
it up to the intercom?
Or would you have a small lapel mic attatched to your headset? Anyway,
has anyone tried this?
Lou- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Nice Article , Wish I had read it as a ppl student. I'm going to use
this technique for my IR rating

Good article, why did you stop with AOPA?
There are other aviation publications.
Lou

Andrew Sarangan provided this link to his article on the subject:
http://www.sarangan.org/aviation/art...er-article.pdf

I thought Andrew's article was very well written.

I record nearly all my flights, not just training. I usually don't listen to
the full recording, but I like to be able to check a few minutes here and
there and see if I heard or said what I thought I did. Yup, I really did
acknowledge, "Follow the Alfa on Alfa." Yup, the DEN tower controller really
did call traffic at 9:00. (It was at 3:00.)

I like to have the device record continuously rather than use
voice-activated mode so I have a timeline.

I had been using an Olympus DM-1 I bought it in 2002 for $250. It could
record 22 hours on the included 64 MB card. I later spent another $100 for a
128 MB card. That card recently died. I looked for a replacement card and
found it's been discontinued. The few I found on the web were $100 each.

Fortunately, my wife suggested I look at new recorders. I found an Olympus
VN-3100PC at Circuit City for $75. It can record over 71 hours. Amazing! Its
USB transfer rate is much lower than the DM-1, but I can live with that.

Jon

I selected an mp3 player/recorder which used SD card (paid
something like $100 in 2005). I put an 256mb card in it and it seemed
to last forever. SD cards have come down quite a bit in prices. I
had just paid $5 for 2gb card (after rebate). I will check to see if
the larger memory SD cards will fit in my recorder.

Hai Longworth