Nuts and Bolts

Howard Leight IMPACT PRO Electronic Shooting Earmuffs

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I recently bought a new set of ear muffs to protect what hearing I have left. I have an old set that the ear cushions were shot (no pun intended) and with the newer type of earmuffs, they allow you to hear the normal surrounding sounds while still protecting your ears. It was time to upgrade.

I did a lot of research first. I planned on using these for more than just shooting. In the past I also wore my earmuffs while cutting wood with the skil saw or while blowing leaves. My little air compressor and my wet vac are so noisy I have to wear some type of ear protection as well.

I started by talking to some folks that do a lot of shooting. I read the reviews on all of them. The things I considered were, protection, fit and cost. There is a huge spectrum of cost. After reading all the reviews and considering what everyone had to say, I narrowed it down to two models. The 3M Peltor Tactical 6S Active Volume Hearing Protector and the Howard Leight by Honeywell R-01902 Impact Pro Electronic Shooting Earmuffs.

I like the idea that I could still hear the normal conversations and noises while wearing the ear muffs. At the range I would always seem to pull up one cushion to hear what someone was saying and then “BOOM” ! So much for protecting my ears. With these newer style ear muffs you flip them on and you can hold a normal conversation and within 5 milliseconds of a loud sound, the loud and hazardous impulse sounds are attenuated and the earmuffs protect your hearing!

I ended up going with the Howard Leight Impact Pro ear muffs because they had great reviews and the fact that they also had an input jack for electronic devices like your phone or mp3 player etc. I thought that this might be nice while mowing the yard or while on an airplane.

I purchased mine online from amazon.com and I am not disappointed. They work great. They are easy to adjust fit and they pick up local noise very well (of course when switched on). And, even though I didn’t read this anywhere, when you play your music or videos (iPhones/iPods, mobile devices, laptops etc.) you can still hear background/surrounding noise! If you have something plugged into the earmuffs and you turn them on, you can listen to the device. But with it just turned on and without the volume up, the earmuffs cut out the outside noise while letting you hear the device! Now, turn up the earmuff’s volume and you can hear the outside noise as well! This would work great on an airplane! Pretty cool.

My first test was at the indoor range Norpoint Shooting and Tactical Training Center in Arlington(great people!). I wore these for two straight hours and they were awesome! They were comfortable and they worked with even the biggest guns. I highly recommend them!

Here are a few features below. You can also check it out at

Impact Pro electronic earmuff shooting protection
Features 30 extreme noise reduction rating
Blocks/reduces sounds over 82 decibels
Rugged earcup design with durable rubberized pressure points
Four hour auto shut-off extends battery life
Amplifies low-level noise and conversation up to 4x times louder
Dual microphones with wind shield
Only uses two AAA batteries with average 350 hours + of life
Single on/off volume control switch
4 hour automatic shut off
Electrical audio input jack for cell phones, mp3 players and radio scanners
Adjustable fit headband and patented air flow control

Windows users:
Do you have two monitors? Have you discovered or been told you need special software to display two different pictures ( a different image for each monitor or one image across both)?
If you Google this you will see lots of different approaches and opinions.
With Windows XP it is simple. Example, if your screen is 1600 x 900 you can just open paint (I use Photoshop) and make a blank image of 3200 x 900 and paste the pictures you want on each half of the image. If you want an image to span, make one 3200 wide. Note: if you have switched your monitors from left to right so the Start button is still on the right monitor, you will have to adjust the image for such. This becomes more of an issue if you are spanning across both monitors. I will show an example shortly.

When you have your image saved where you want, double click and save as your background. Cool huh?
Now, let’s say you have Windows 7 and you try the above. That doesn’t work so well. Why? Windows 7 makes a cache copy and adjusts the size to what it sees your individual monitors are. Not so good. You will get both images on each screen. Dang. But wait, there’s more ! Sorry, couldn’t resist. This is a quirk in Windows 7. Instead of double clicking the image and then making it your desktop (and have a double image problem, let alone not be able to span both monitors), do the following.

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Right click on a blank part of the desktop and select Personalize. Now Select Desktop Background and navigate to where your image is. Select it and (important) select Tile.
For some reason, even though most of the procedure is the same, it will only work if you do it this way. Try it. It works.

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The above image is an example of how to make your image span across both monitors if you keep the start button on the right monitor.

I have also included (* it is a 35mb file) the PSD file for Photoshop so you can build your own desktop images. You can have a separate image for each monitor or a spanned image to cover both monitors (one for left right monitor or right left switched monitors).