Cloudbase Engineering

Every once in a while a new product falls in my lap and I come away thinking how did I ever live without that?? Today that happened again! There’s a company based in Glendale, California named Cloudbase Engineering that has a whole catalog of products in that category.

Frequently, if not on every flight, my headset controller will slide off my lap and onto the floor or get wedged be­tween the seat and the wall panel. Most irritating! I’m usually grabbing at the controller because I switched ATC frequen­cies and the new frequency is talking at 100 decibels or so. WAY TOO LOUD! Or I’ve just contacted Clearance Delivery and they are reading me a clearance and the volume is too low. Where’s that darned controller!

So last month I ran across a couple of devices that put a stop to that! Product one is a headset controller holder for a Bose A20 headset and product two is a headset control­ler holder for a Lightspeed Zulu or Sierra. Since I have the Zulu 3, I opened the box appropriately labeled and without reading anything popped the holder on the back of my Zulu controller. It snapped in firmly. In the little box that it was packed in were two items. Item one – two suction cups. You can put the holder on your side window, instrument panel or wall panel (if it’s non-porous). Item two – a permanent mounting bracket. If you don’t want to use suction cups and would like to mount the holder permanently you can use this bracket. Other mounting options include:

  • Piggyback Cessna ashtray
  • Helicopter or regional jet using the microphone bracket
  • Clamp to fuselage tubing in rag-wing aircraft

A perfect fit for my Lightspeed Zulu 3 controller.
To mount the holder, use either the permanent mounting bracket or the suction cups.

No matter how you mount it, the controller is always in the same place and if you want to remove it, it pops right out!

And finally, the price. If you’ve read my many columns and articles before, you know that I frequently refer to products as not costing too much in “airplane dollars”. In the case of this product, at $45.00 it doesn’t cost much in either “airplane dol­lars” or “real dollars”. If you’re interested, look at their website and peruse their other fine products, which will be reviewed in upcoming issues of this magazine. And finally, you may access their website at www.cloudbaseengineering.com.