dublinpilot wrote:
How do you protect a baby’s hearing?
I used an ordinary headset. It worked well although that could depend on the particular model.
Kids. Most of the small ones aleep anywhere where there is engine noise and vibration.
We used some soft pads under his hat and that was really enough. The Piper Warrior is really not that noisy. Then Cirrus is MUCH noisier without headsets. But now the kids are 12 and 14 and they both have a BOSE headset and play with their iPads or phones during flight …
I fly a couple of aircraft – a DA42 NG and a beautifully soundproofed Chieftain, both with Bose A20 headsets – where you can literally barely hear any noise at all. It’s blissful.
Twins can be much quieter than singles. The engines are further away but IMHO crucially you don’t have the turbulent airflow around the airframe, which rattles everything – especially the windows – at 2x or 3x the RPM frequency. I have flown in a DA42 which was noticeably quieter than the TB20 (and probably comparable to a TBM850) but the most silent was a Cessna 421C in which one could almost have a conversation without headsets. However the 421C owner could have run a TBM for what he was paying on avgas.
The bigger twins tend to have better insulation, in the form of a layer of foam between the airframe skin and the internal trim. Most SEPs have nothing there, or just patches of 10mm thick stuff. But nothing comes free; the better the sound insulation, the heavier the foam is, and nobody wants 100kg of the stuff.
From a long time ago, a childrens headset thread. I would definitely always give kids a headset, due to the noise level, but the dirt cheap ones which most people give their kids are pretty bad. A used Bose-X from Ebay is the best one IMHO. The A20 is less good for a person with a small head.
Also, pressurized planes are normally much quieter.
AdamFrisch wrote:
Also, pressurized planes are normally much quieter
Well if money didn’t play any role I’d buy a pressurised TP or jet anyways, a PC-12 or a Citation would be great. Unfortunately that would require me to win the lottery or found a really successful medical startup or become the CEO of some pharmaceutical company and none of this is likely. :(
Or you could invent a drug which is so great and is so provably free of side effects that many in the medical profession push for it to be added to the water supply…
But wait… It’s been done! Statins!
Only kidding 
MedEwok wrote:
Unfortunately that would require me to win the lottery
Winning the lottery would require you to play first. Well, the current Euromillions jackpot is at 97 M€. Your chance of winning it is only 1 in 139,838,160 though. Your chance to die from a lightning strike is 1 in 18,000,000 per year.
Would buy you enough of a plane for the whole family though.
Peter wrote:
Or you could invent a drug which is so great and is so provably free of side effects that many in the medical profession push for it to be added to the water supply…But wait… It’s been done! Statins!
Only kidding
Statins are actually pretty close to what you describe, although in some individuals the side effects can be nasty. Yet they are one of the few drugs that really does increase life expectancy and not just some irrelevant minor statistic.
Rwy20 wrote:
Winning the lottery would require you to play first. Well, the current Euromillions jackpot is at 97 M€. Your chance of winning it is only 1 in 139,838,160 though. Your chance to die from a lightning strike is 1 in 18,000,000 per year.Would buy you enough of a plane for the whole family though.
