I emailed Alphatec yesterday asking whether my headsets are compatible with my new radio and they replied very promptly this morning saying that they are not, and indeed not with any GA standard radio. And my pal Roger has, I think, put his finger on the reason why, namely that the ‘Mickey Mouse’ single jack headsets that we use in ULMs that are compatible with hand-held radios, like the Icom that was installed in my Savannah, are not signal-split ie the headset microphone and headphones all have a shared ground connection.<\/p>\n
Or maybe they were compatible because they interfaced with the Icom via a separate Alphatec intercom, which they said I could do if I wanted to with my new radio. Obviously I wouldn’t because the new radio has an intercom built-in making an external intercom unnecessary, and that’s without thinking about the extra weight. So in any case, I’ve now got to do some more modifications to the radio installation in my Savannah as it has to be changed to a twin-jack set up with GA-type headsets in order to function.<\/p>\n
That’s a relief to know in many respects because I at least now have an action plan again. As I spent a lot of time (but not money luckily) wiring up the radio’s D-plug I thought that I’d try to retain as much of it as possible and change the under-dash single jack plugs myself to doubles. Just sourcing the plugs was a nightmare, however, as suppliers who have them in stock either want silly money for them or to charge upwards of 20\u20ac just to send them, or those who don’t hold them have a delivery lead-time of several weeks.<\/p>\n
This got me thinking because the easiest and quickest way of solving the problem would be to purchase the radio manufacturer’s prefabricated wiring loom that comes complete with two pairs of headset sockets already attached. It would allow me to strip out all of the radio cabling in the Savannah as apart from plugging it into the radio itself, it only needs a power and an earth connnection and for the PTT to be connected to the appropriate wire in the loom.<\/p>\n
And lo and behold, a Google search revealed that a new and unused one was up for sale on the AFORS web site in the UK for quite a bit less than I’d have to pay for a brand new one from a ‘proper’ supplier in Europe, so after contacting the seller (Great Western Airsports) I paid for it by Paypal and it’s now on its way to me. In the meantime, I’ve found quite a few GA headsets that will work with it for sale on Le Bon Coin and have chased two matching ones from different sellers.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the less expensive of the two has already been sold, but I’m in no big hurry as even if I get my radio working, while I’m waiting I still have an elderly Aerolite 360 GA headset from my Piper Cherokee days back in the 1980s which is still in good condition and should still work fine. And in the meantime I’ll keep my eyes open for a pair of matching GA headsets on Le Bon Coin and strip out the cabling that’s now in the Savannah before the cable loom arrives.<\/p>\n
My UK flight is therefore still postponed but it least now looks as though I’ll be able to start making plans again in the not too distant future. And I must say, it will be a relief to put this instrument panel project to bed \ud83d\ude10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I emailed Alphatec yesterday asking whether my headsets are compatible with my new radio and they replied very promptly this morning saying that they are not, and indeed not with any GA standard radio. And my pal Roger has, I think, put his finger on the reason why, namely that the ‘Mickey Mouse’ single jack … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15118"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15125,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15118\/revisions\/15125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}