WIX Archives

Re: Gentex helmets

Posted by Brad on Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:20:13 PM

In reply top Re: Gentex helmets posted by Olivier Lacombe on Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:33:37 PM


: P.S. How come you have three helmets?

I actually have more than that. I probably have 7 or 8 HGU-55's, plus a couple of other kinds. Of the ones in the picture, the basic helmet is my current C-17 helmet with NVG mounts. The one with the double visor assembly is the third one that I had in C-130's. (The first one got split while on my head,I still have it! The second one got airdropped at Red Flag. It was cracked anyway). The one with my mask is another C-130 Helmet that I use for warbirds. They all have been converted to work with civilian radios, but I can change the microphones back to the old style and use them in helicopters.

The other helmets that I have were bought from military Surplus. When my last base converted from C-141's to C-17's they got rid of all the old helmets. C-17's have high impedence radios and wouldn't work with the old style helmets and masks. So, they sent them all to surplus with out removing any of the parts. I still don't know why they did that. It would have been much cheaper to just change the electronics. But, the squadrons bought all new helmets for everybody. A guy I used to fly with bought about fifty of them from surplus, all in perfect working order. He got tired of them laying around the house after a couple of years and threw most of them away. I ended up with 15-20 of them. Over the last couple of years, I've given some of them to warbird folks I know and donated a couple to museums. I'll probably keep two of them (not including my C-17 helmet) and the rest are going to a museum that takes passengers up in their warbirds.

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