Children as Passengers

I don't by any means claim to be an expert as I just took my kids up for the
first time this past weekend (see previous post). I waited a while before
taking them up mostly due to the fact that I wasn't getting in as much
flying as I used to with the expanding family. I wanted to get some more
hours under my belt. My son--who is three--kept his headset on the entire
time. I used a pair of Lightspeed QFR Solos for him and the Sigtronics child
headsets for my one-year old daughter. She promptly took off the Sigs after
40 seconds. We had a few sets of the soft earplugs as back-up and she kept
them on for 1.5 hours after which she took one of them out. The fact that
she fell asleep on climb-out helped with the ear plug placement. People have
recommended using the baby hats that cover the ears to prevent them from
taking out the plugs but it was an 87 degree day so we opted not to use it.

What helped after the first hour was the portable DVD player we brought
along. We have a music input with the Garmin 340 audio panel so I used a
simple stereo 1/8" plug out of the headset jack into the music input and
voila, Dora the Explorer through our headphones. However, whenever there was
chatter on ATC (which is quite often on a nice day in NY), the audio would
mute. The "Pilot Isolation" function took care of that (as well as preserved
my concentration).

As I said in my other post, I put a remark in the flight plan stating I had
children on board requesting shallow descents and like others, I've found
that ATC was more than willing to accomodate. My kids were much better than
I expected but in retrospect, they pretty much acted the way they do in our
minivan. Their behavior during long car tripsmay be a good indication of
their aircraft demeanor. So if you're taking other people's kids up,
discreetly ask them about how they like car trips.

Guys like Rick Durden and Jay Honeck have much more experience than I do so
definitely read Rick's article from AvWeb.

Marco Leon


"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
...
What is the collective experience on flying young children? I realize
each
child is different, but is there an age at which *most* children become
decent passengers in light aircraft?

How do you address protecting a young child's ears?

Stories? Dos? Don'ts?