Building the Safest Headset in the Sky: Lightspeed Aviation at Sun 'n Fun 2026

— All right, Matt Ryan with AOPA here with Eric Landry of Lightspeed. Um, obviously you guys are in the headset game, but uh, tell me a little bit about kind of the Lightspeed story. Oh, sure. That's a really easy one. You know, Lightspeed uh, our vision is to create products that protect and save lives. So, you know, we're very safety-focused aviation company. We are celebrating our 30th anniversary this year at Oshkosh. You know, it started off as a small little table at Oshkosh in 1996 and we've grown through 30 years of now safety focused. We are founded by pilots. We have our, you know, pilots in our company. We're aviation-centric company that creates safety products that go into our not only our headsets, but the other our stories and our assets that we create for the general aviation community. Yeah, you were telling me about some of your, I guess, aviation safety resources before we were filming. He has some interesting things. Sounds like some conversations he'll have with interesting good people to talk to about aviation safety. That's yeah, great question. You know, we've started a few years ago really partnering with some safety-focused organizations like NAFI, like SAFE, even COPA. You know, the Cirrus Owners Pilot Association that are safety-focused as are we. So, we partner with them to get to their membership base and educate them on safety stuff. We create safety series content. You know, we did a whole ebook on surviving an off-airport landing. So, it's all about survival and safety. Um, we are launching this year a webinar series all about safety. We just finished one last month with Axel Alvarez who was talking about carbon monoxide detection and did some of his flight testing. We have one coming up soon with a little secret that I'm just giving you as an exclusive right now. We are in the works with Mr. Greg Fife, the crash site investigator. We'll be doing one in a couple of months with him. And we have a bunch of safety focused webinars on the way. We have some video content we're creating around safety messages from our pilots who love to talk about what they do to stay safe. And so, we like to build content and create share resources with the world on our safety messaging. Yeah, I think it's so valuable. You can't see you can go read an NTSB report and see what happened or something like that, but I think having all those other resources from, you know, ourselves, from you guys, from just any angle you can get it with safety. There's just you can't get enough of that. You know, people love to hear or read stories. They like to watch videos and stories. So, we create these stories to share. That's what we do. I'd say aviation's a better place when that safe culture's infiltrating every And we also create products that are safety focused. So, I know. You guys do of course, like I said, you make very you know, high quality headsets. You know, starting out maybe people may you know, you're probably not the great first headset somebody buys if I had to guess. Right. You know, there are a lot of stages to start off with a nice passive headset to learn just so they can hear the tower. When they're about to get their license, they're ready to go. They When they're starting to look at I want an ANR, I want an active noise reduction headset. They come to Lightspeed. And we have four models for them to choose from. So, you have that entry level Sierra that's really versatile. It's a good price point. It is a really quality ANR headset. And then we have our Zulu 3, our Zulu 4, our Lightspeed Delta Zulu. Yeah. Do we want to uh Sure, you want to say a few of them here? Sure. So, like I was saying, this is our Sierra headset. It has a um left or right mic boom adjustment on the Sierra. You can tell it's really good for families with those with toddlers. It's really small or it can grow with that person. As their head grows, so does the headset. So — my first flight with my daughter, she was I think four maybe at the time. I don't know. I gave her my old training headset. It was just one of the random ones, you know. — Yeah, just to mop up — ridiculous. It barely fit. It kept sliding down. She got real mad cuz of that, but — You may want to look into a Sierra for her. — Yeah, I have a Sierra now. I was about ready to go for her first flight. There you go. So, this is our Sierra. And then we have our Zulu 3 that's been out since 2017. This is um crafted of — The same metal alloy. So, it's stainless steel headset, magnesium cups. So, it's a little bit lighter than the Sierra, which is a little bit more plastic focused. If you want to try that, feel the difference here. Yeah, there's yeah, it's lighter. Um it's a better ANR. Um very comfortable, very reliable. — How do you engage Is it a better ANR? It's You can just feel it. It's a quieter headset. It's going to have a better technology to counteract those noise signals. Um of course, there's no

universal ANR number that anybody puts out there, so you know. It's a test it for yourself. Compare it yourself. Um where the Zulu 3 and the Zulu 3 series, the Zulu series and the Delta Zulu series stands out with these cables. It's a Kevlar reinforced braided cable that's very durable. It's very flexible. You can tie it in a knot. And so, because of these, we can put a 7-year warranty on the Zulu 3 and and the Zulu 4 and the Delta Zulu. So, the Zulu 4 came out at Oshkosh last year. Which is this one here. And this one here is the So, we made a few adjustments from the 3 to the 4. So, with the Zulu 4, you know, it has a longer mic boom cuz we've heard from our customers who saying, "Hey, I'd like a little bit longer mic boom on my Zulu 3. " So, okay, we made that. I want a little bit longer cord upper cable. Okay, we did that. The comfort level on all of our headsets is pretty premium, but we're proud of our frame fitting ourselves. On the Zulu 4, dual density foam, so it's better when you're wearing glasses and caps. It's a much more comfortable headset. — Yeah, I I've had that experience of uh I remember I forgot my normal pair of sunglasses and they were kind of the chunky ones, you know. — Right, with the big thick stem. Yeah, it's like 30 minutes in and like I had to take them off. I couldn't and I'm I actually need prescription, too. Yeah, this really is a problem today. Safety concern. Uh yeah, I remember like the front of me feeling it for a while. That it matters to have that. It does. To have that comfort because if you have these impediments or whatever and annoyance even, it can be a safety factor, you know. Um this does have dual Bluetooth, so you can pair with multiple devices at a time and toggle between the two. It also has a voice isolation feature that blocks out 90% of background noise. Whenever you're using your Bluetooth talking to the tower to get clearance or you're talking to your spouse saying, "I'm going to be late. " She's like, "Where are you? I don't hear anything. " It's like, "Well, I'm using the voice isolation feature. " And then finally, there's of course the Delta Zulu if you want to come around and see this. So, you know, this is really over the plate safety. You know, it just definitely aligns with what our brand is. This is the Lightspeed Delta Zulu. It came out in 22 2022. It has the carbon monoxide detection built into the headset. You don't need the app for that. It's always on. It's always monitoring. So, it'll give you voice recordings voice alerts as to how many parts per million of uh carbon monoxide is present in the cockpit around your face um at that time, it'll tell you cautionary or critical levels as well. Um it also has a hearing acuity feature, so you can map your own hearing deficiencies after you take a 12 frequency hearing test. Yeah. So, some pilots who may be feeling like they're aging out of being able to fly because their hearing's going away, when you have they use this hearing acuity feature on their headset. It's like — It's a hearing test and it creates a profile customized just for them. Yeah. And they can create multiple profiles. — it'll adjust based on the results of the test. So, they can So, they can hear again. Interesting. You know, especially you know, when we get older some of those higher frequencies are harder to hear, it compensates for that. — Yeah. Yeah. So, Side note, I taught a uh high school aviation course for a while and I remember every now and then you get like one kid who decided they were going to do the dog whistle uh on their — Oh, really? whatever. I can still hear him, but I think there's going to come a day where — You can look into this in a couple of years, maybe. And just to see or maybe start a baseline now. — Right. Yeah. And of course, it has, you know, different power management and also has, you know, the braided Kevlar cable. But, you know, we're very proud of the app that we've created. With this app, the digital platform, we can fit push out new features and updates and things about the Delta Zulu free. And once you buy it, you know, we can send out a new feature to you. — How does that push How does that work? So, with the app, you know, if you're you know, you log on, you have the app, we'll just send you firmware updates through your app and all you got to do is just go through your firmware update, and then boom, all of a sudden you have some new features. Yeah. So, that's awesome. Yeah. So, that's the safety story with our headsets. Yeah. Too. So, um obviously there are many brands of headsets out there. Um who is this for and if dare to say maybe who it's not for? You know, I can say who it's for. You know, what we find are a big marketer CFIs. You know, certified flight instructors jump in and out of various planes. You know, to do their training. So, they might not have maintenance records off the bat right now, but this carbon monoxide detector, soon as they start it up, they're in the cockpit

they can tell, am I safe? The headset tells you right away, am I safe? Um, the hearing acuity feature we found is for an older pilot who may have some hearing loss. You know, that happens over time, especially when you're around loud engines. You know, creating that new profile is just great. But it is for everybody. You know? Um, our Zulu 4 and our Zulu 3 though, applications for everybody around the world, for any mission in the world. Yeah. That sounds good. Yeah. Well, um, excited to see this webinar that's coming out. So, again, who was the next one you said? It will be with Greg Feith. Cool. Jeff. Well, um, We're really excited about continuing to push out content about safety and to help to grow the GA community. That's our brand. That's who we are. Yeah. Yeah, we love being here, too. Talking to our customers. You know, being at Sun 'n Fun is so fun cuz you actually can hear, you know, feedback from customers. I love this. I would you change this? And that's how we grow. I was going to ask, how do you go about the process if like, you know, a headset's a headset, right? So, how do you keep building on that over time? I mean, We have an years now, how's it going to get better than this? We have a road map. We have an amazing engineering team who keeps their fingers on the pulse of what the community wants and how technology updates and changes. As time As our world changes, so do we. We evolve. And we What makes sense to put into our headset, we will. Yeah. So, we do have some exciting things coming up in the future. Nothing I can tell you now, of course, but we're always working on the next thing. Yeah. Um so, yeah, this is Sun 'n Fun right now. Um where else I'm assuming you'll be at a lot of the big events coming up, but if somebody wanted to stop by and throw on, you know — I mean, if you if you're global, we'll be at Aero Friedrichshafen next week in Germany. Um we're definitely at Oshkosh every year at AirVenture, right outside of Hangar B. You know, we're the corner lot right there, and that's a lot of fun. Where we get to see about 10,000 of our closest friends at that time. So, and you know, you can catch us at some of the smaller shows, too, or even some helicopter shows, some vertical shows. They're fun. We're everywhere. Sounds good. Yeah. Well, uh any other closing thoughts before we head off? — You know, Matt, it's always fun to talk to you guys. It's always good to just share our stories with you, and thanks for stopping by and coming and asking all the right questions. Yeah. Well, uh Matt Landry Well, I've been here at the Lakeland Linder Airport. Well, we'll uh see you next time. Thanks. — Yeah.