Fyshh Aero·COMComing soon
A cockpit companion that listens so the pilot doesn't miss a clearance.
The COM device is the optional hardware counterpart to the FLT app.
It is a self-contained unit that taps into the headphone circuit of a general aviation or training aircraft through one cable, hears what the intercom and the radio say, and supplements the pilot's own devices with sensors the aircraft never carried.
Cockpit audio
Every clearance transcribed and shown on the wrist for read-back
The heaviest workload a student faces is not the flying but the radio, and a clearance received while turning downwind in a busy circuit is easily mis-heard or half-remembered. COM listens to both intercom and radio, transcribes the speech and parses it with a grammar built around ICAO phraseology, with a language-model fallback for what the standard grammar does not cover, so it can pick out what matters.
- Filtered to your call sign. COM recognises transmissions addressed to the aircraft's call sign, extracts the clearance elements and places a transcript history of ATC requests and clearances on the pilot's Apple Watch, so the read-back and the compliance check are made from a display rather than from memory.
- QNH and wind from the ATIS. When COM overhears the ATIS, it parses the QNH and wind and can update FLT's settings automatically, so the altitude arbitration works from the current pressure.
- A record of the radio environment. An instructor can review a student's radio work afterwards instead of recalling it, and a school gains a record of the airspace its students trained in.
- Processed on the phone. Transcription runs on the pilot's own devices and works without a network connection.
How it connects
One cable into the headset circuit and nothing else touches the aircraft
COM is carried between club aircraft the way a headset is, and it needs no installation, no power from the aircraft and no change to the avionics.
Plugs in like a headset
COM sits in the headphone circuit between the aircraft and the pilot's headset, drawing nothing from the aircraft and modifying nothing in it. The audio capture is passive, so if COM were to fail the headset audio would carry on exactly as before.
Talks to FLT over Bluetooth
Audio and sensor data stream to the pilot's iPhone over Bluetooth Low Energy, where FLT does the processing and displays the results on the phone and the watch.
Records on board
All data, including intercom and radio audio, can be recorded to flash storage on the device, so a training aircraft gains a flight data and cockpit audio recorder it would otherwise never have.
Shared like a headset
COM carries its own power and its own sensors. A school keeps one in each aircraft as standard equipment, the way it keeps headsets for students, and a pilot who hires or owns an aircraft keeps their own in the headset case and plugs it into whatever they fly that day.
Additional sensors
Sensors that supplement the phone and the watch
The iPhone and Apple Watch have no idea what the air in the cockpit is like or how hard the engine is working. COM fills those gaps and feeds the results into the same flight record.
Cabin air quality
A carbon monoxide and volatile organic compound detector watches the air the pilot is breathing, which a phone cannot do and a training aircraft rarely monitors.
A better altimeter
A higher-accuracy barometric altimeter gives FLT a cleaner altitude source than the phone's or the watch's, and one more independent reading for its sensor arbitration.
Motion and heading
An accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer supply load factor, rotation rates and heading from a device that stays put, rather than from a phone in a pocket.
Temperature and humidity
Cabin temperature and humidity give FLT a proxy for density altitude, so performance in a hot, high or humid session can be read against the conditions.
Engine RPM from sound
Ambient microphones and the intercom feed let COM approximate engine RPM from the sound spectrum, giving FLT the power setting that separates a stall entry from slow flight and a glide from a descent.
COM is not a certified flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder, and its transcription is an aid to read-back rather than a substitute for listening to the controller.
Early access
Fly with COM before the first production run
We are looking for student pilots, instructors and flight schools to trial COM units as they become available, in the aircraft they fly every week.
You fly with a prototype unit for a few weeks, FLT records as normal, and you tell us what the transcription heard, what it missed and how the device behaved in your aircraft. We fix things and send the next revision.
COM will be sold as a device to the school or the student and priced with the first production run. We see it in the same category as a good noise-cancelling headset: a school buys one per aircraft, and a licensed pilot buys their own. Early-access participants will hear first when COM is available and we'll look after all our test pilots with preferential pricing.