Communications & Ear Protection was founded in 1998 with a commitment to provide the U.S. Army aviator with state-of-the-art communications equipment. Communication equipment is designed to enable vocal messages to be easily understood, even in the highest noise environments of the Army helicopter.
The communications earplug (CEP) was developed by the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Fort Rucker, Alabama to meet that goal. Tests conducted with aviation units fully demonstrated the capabilities of the CEP in actual operational environments found in all helicopters used in Army aviation.
The CEP is a device that provides the exceptional hearing protection of an expanding foam earplug while passing to the ear the clearest speech signal attainable. A miniature transducer and foam earplug are coupled in a unique arrangement to yield a light weight, high quality communications device that can be used alone or in combination with circumaural hearing protection.
Combining the foam earplug and the sound transducer into a single unit results in a simple but effective approach to providing the user with excellent sound attenuation and unparalleled speech intelligibility. The foam tip is attached to the transducer using a threaded hollow tube. This provides a pathway that allows sound to travel from the transducer, unimpeded, into the occluded ear canal. Used eartips are easily replaced because of the threaded design. Foam eartips are available in three sizes.
The noise reduction of the foam eartips coupled with exceptional quality speech signals enable the user to achieve extremely high speech intelligibility in the noisiest environments.
The CEP worn in combination with other hearing protection reduces noise exposure to minimal levels. Tests conducted by the U.S. Army showed reductions of more than 30 dB for low frequency noise spectra that are prevalent in helicopters.
