The Headset I Wish I Had Bought Before My First Talladega

I had been going to races since I was a boy watching them on television with my dad, and I had been sitting in grandstands in person for a long time, before I ever put on a headset that actually fit me. The one that finally did came from Rugged Radios. That sounds like a small thing to complain about. It is not a small thing.

The lesson landed at the fall race at Talladega. Linda and I drove down in the Silverado on a Friday, stayed at the hotel like we always do, and were in our seats by ten on Sunday morning with a cooler between us and my scanner clipped to my belt. I was wearing an over-the-head headset I had used for years. By the time the pace laps were done it had pressed the arms of my glasses into the sides of my head hard enough that I could feel my pulse in my temples. By the end of that race I was lifting one ear cup off every caution just to let the pressure out, which meant missing half of what I had come to listen to.

That Monday I went looking for something different. What I settled on, and what I have owned for three seasons now, is the Rugged Radios H41 behind-the-head headset.

The band goes behind my head instead of across the top of it. That one change is the whole point for me. I wear a cap to the track, and with the behind-the-head band the cap sits the way a cap is supposed to sit, flat and level, with nothing pinching underneath and no lump pushing up through the crown. The ear cups sit around my ears rather than flat against them, and the arms of my glasses stay where they belong.

Then there is the part I did not think about much when I bought it and think about constantly now. The headset is rated at 24 NRR, which is the number that tells you how much noise it takes off before the noise gets to you. I am not going to pretend I can hear a pin drop at Talladega. I cannot. What I can do is stand at the fence for a green flag run and come away without the ringing in my ears I used to have on the drive back to the hotel. I am sixty-one years old and I would like to still hear my wife talking to me at seventy.

The other half of how it works is the cable. It has a 3.5mm input jack, so it plugs straight into the handheld race scanner I have carried for years, the same one I listen to team radio and the broadcast on. There is a volume control on the headset itself, so when the booth gets loud I can reach up and turn it down without taking my eyes off the track. Rugged Radios also builds a noise canceling microphone into it. I have never once used it to talk to anybody. I bought this thing to hear, and to protect what hearing I have left, and three seasons in, that is still the whole job.

Twenty-four decibels of protection and a band that goes behind my head instead of across my glasses. That is the entire reason I bought it, and three seasons later it is still the only reason I need.

Linda wears foam earplugs and always has. She says she can hear plenty of the race through them and she likes being able to hear me complain about a pit stop. That is fine, and I am not going to talk her out of it. But earplugs alone would not do for me, because I want the scanner in my ear and the outside noise out of it, and those are two different jobs.

What I hear on a green flag run now is the spotter, the crew, and the broadcast, with the cars going past as a shape rather than a wall of sound. It took a weekend to get used to hearing the announcer a beat before I see the flag, and I will admit that is a strange thing to enjoy. I do enjoy it.

It is not perfect, so here is the honest part. Getting the band seated right takes a second, and if I put it on crooked the left cup sits funny until I fix it. The cable is a cable and it will tangle in a jacket pocket. And if you are hoping to chat back and forth with the folks around you, this is not that. I have never tested the microphone and I am not going to pretend I have.

The headset is one piece of a day that got a lot more comfortable once I stopped buying the wrong things. The stadium seat with the back support is the other piece, on account of my left knee, and the soft cooler has carried twelve cans plus ice into both tracks for two seasons now. Check your own track's posted cooler policy before you pack it, because they are not all the same. The headset is the part I wish I had sorted out a decade earlier.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you go to one race a year and you are content with foam earplugs, keep your money and enjoy the day. Earplugs cost almost nothing and they work. But if you are the sort who wants the spotter and the crew in your ear while the cars go by, then what you are really shopping for is a headset you can stand to wear for six hours. That is the part I got wrong for years. I kept buying headsets that were fine for an hour and miserable by the third caution. The Rugged Radios H41 is the first one I have owned where the fit stopped being something I thought about by two in the afternoon. My cap sits right. My glasses sit right. My ears are quiet on the drive back. Buy for the fit first. The sound is good, but the fit is what gets you to the end of the day still glad you came.