Ham Radio In The Airplane

No doubt about it...even though it is one of ... sniff ... THOSE intercoms {;-)


No, Ron, interfacing it through an intercom or audio panel removes a lot of the
folderol with interfacing it directly to the headset. However, you STILL need
to know the mic voltage and impedance levels (three different kinds in popular
use) for your parTICular ham rig.

Jim






"Ron Natalie"
shared these priceless pearls of wisdom:

-
-"Jim Weir" wrote in message
...
-
- The point is, there IS no ham radio standard, while the aircraft headset
- standard is quite well defined. You can't just hook the aircraft headset
into
- the ham rig on a PNP basis. You always wind up dicking around with voltage
and
- impedance shifters to make it play well.
-
-While putzing around with my aviation headset and my ham gear, I found that a
lot
-of the sins of bias voltages and impedences were covered up by placing my
sigtronics
-portable intercom between the aviation headset and the radio. After that,
it's just
-a matter of getting the connectors right and hooking up the PTT.
-

Jim Weir (A&P/IA, CFI, & other good alphabet soup)
VP Eng RST Pres. Cyberchapter EAA Tech. Counselor
http://www.rst-engr.com

"Jim Weir" wrote in message ...
No doubt about it...even though it is one of ... sniff ... THOSE intercoms {;-)

Oh well. I managed to pick up my SPO for $25. The only RST intercom I ever got
to use was assembled by a guy who barely knew which end of the iron to hold on to.
(His piloting skills weren't much better by the way), so I'll not judge yours by that
instance.

No, Ron, interfacing it through an intercom or audio panel removes a lot of the
folderol with interfacing it directly to the headset. However, you STILL need
to know the mic voltage and impedance levels (three different kinds in popular
use) for your parTICular ham rig.

Yeah, but it's within the realm of tweaking. I can say that I could drive my FT470
directly from the "to the aircraft radio" side of my SPO.

Of course, the other quick and dirty is to just use ICOM as their aviation and amateur
gear share the same accessories and they've already built a aviation headset converter
box.