Operational Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR)

[Glenn Weston]

Hi Guys, I bought this up on another forum "viperpit.org".

I thought a CVR would be fantastic particularly if you were doing combat type flying, but there didn't seem to be alot of interest in what I mentioned back there.

It would certainly be good for going back over ATC instructions to make sure you got things correct after your flight.
I have seen people get into large forum fights in the online ATC arena just because of something that might have been said or missed over the radio whilst flying online, so I think it would be a benefit to have a CVR particularly with online flying.

There is a free program called Xcorder, originally written for Ham radio applications for recording from an audio jack of a radio, It has voice activation (VOX) also to save space during recording sessions, The Sensititvity of the activation is adjustable so if you want to just keep recording during quiet times that can also be done.

Whilst I have not implimented the program in my sim, I have run a few little tests just on a PC & it seems like it will do the trick.
I have actually tested & had woking a real aircraft intercom system that I have interfaced to the PC sound card ( Very easy to do & very realistic). Intercoms are pretty cheap on Ebay. Some of them even have options for Music input from a music radio or ipod so you can listen to some music while you are flying along.

My idea is to run one of the intercom headset outputs to the Xcorder pc & then all will be recorded (Pilot to Co-Pilot) (Pilot to ATC) (ATC to Pilot)etc. so you have all bases covered. I actually have a copy of the software & can post it somewhere if required so you guys can have a play with it, I originally downloaded it from some corner of the Web but I don't have a link.

A google search should track it down otherwise just let me know, it is a free app so I think we could even host it here somewhere.
A Screen shot of the Application is attached.

Regards Glenn.

[capetonian]

The official page and download link is: http://www.gromkov.com/faq/capture/xcorder.html

[Glenn Weston]

Just thought I would add a little further info on this xcorder program, apparently it also had a name change & is now called vox2file.

I recently also was a passanger with a mate of mine on an IFR flight from Bankstown to Canberra (Australia) in a Piper cheiftan.

I decided to plug in a Y adaptor to the headset socket in the plane, didn't get all technical & worry about impedence matching etc. just a straight split & fed the audio from the intercom to the mic input on my EEEPC 901 & used xcorder to record all the cockpit audio, the results were fantastic.

I recorded the whole flights audio, cockpit & ATC.
I decided to record continuousley....the file size was about 30Mbytes at lowest (default) sample rate & 350Mbytes at CD quality, both samples are very good to listen to on playback. This was about 50 odd minutes of recording I adjusted the sample rate on the return trip.

Cheers Glenn.