On Saturday, January 2, 2021 at 7:10:44 AM UTC-6, wrote:
My glider is equipped with a quite old Becker box. The microphone cable is in very bad conditions and i have a bunch of cables going back and forth from the panel to the box, which is fixed close to my right shoulder behind the seat. I'm wondering if this is really necessary, or if i should go for a much cleaner setup with just the microphone cables and the ptt cables starting from the radio and that's it. Is there any good reason to keep the Becker box, and refurbish all the connection cables?
Thanks for any advice.

Domenic,

I have only seen a Becker (or Dittel) speaker/microphone box installed in one glider. The idea of the box is to simplify the installation of a radio. This starts with a pre-made wiring harnesses and a microphone with a DIN connector. Then add a speaker box and it is kind of "plug and play" - albeit by adding additional cost to the bottom line.

You can eliminate the speaker box by connecting power, speaker, and PTT directly to the radio's DB connector. That part is not particularly difficult.. However, attaching the microphone's very thin wires (26ga or less), plus multi-stranded shielding, to the DB can be a bit trickier. There are some hints on this at http://aviation.derosaweb.net/presentations/#wiring (slide 63-65) and http://aviation.derosaweb.net/presen...s/#transceiver.

Personally, I prefer making my own radio harnesses. They are always just the right length.

My $0.02.

- John (OHM)