Can anyone point me to the specs for the cable used to program Yaesu's FT-2600?  K1ACK mentioned building such a cable in his product review of the radio...

Thanks - Kevin

I've made some good progress today.

1.  Make the assumption that you can use pretty much any aviation headset in pretty much any GA aircraft with pretty much any aircraft radio that might be installed.  Again assume that therefore most aviation headsets operate within a fairly standard set of parameters.

2.  David Clark publishes a schematic of their headsets - see http://www.DavidClark.com/schematic/h10-30el.htm.  This diagram shows headphone impedances, two 300-ohm units in series.  From this assertion, draw the conclusion that most aviation headsets offer somewhere around 600-ohm impedance on the 'phones.

3.  The manufacturer of my headset, Pilot Avionics, offers several microphone choices, detailed on this page: http://www1.drive.net/_pilot-av/pages/microphn.htm.  This page offers three choices, electrically.
  -  a "Low impedance" electret,
  -  a dynamic that's listed at "150 ohms + 15 ohms"
  -  a set of electrets, including mine, the PA-5, which offer 50 ohms at 16 v DC.

So now the problem becomes pretty simple.  If you can't find specs on your headset, assume that yours falls close enough to the above specs that it'll work in an aircraft which accepts the above.  Check your rig's specs for audio out and mic in.  Match impedances with transformers as necessary, match levels with pots as necessary, provide a PTT or VOX, and ham away!

DISCLAIMER:  Electronics is not my strong suit.  I may very well be missing something important, and I welcome correction.  I encourage all readers to check my references and my logic, and use at their own risk.

Kevin D.

Dick,
I'm not confident about my local library's ability to get me access to that original article.  If there's something that's not copyrighted that you could post, that'd be great.  Or, I've got plenty of web space available, you could e-mail it to me and I could post it up and share the URL.

Thanks - W4KJD Kevin

Sorry for the dup question.  For some reason, my search for "aviation headsets" did not show the discussions from earlier this month.

W4KJD

Howdy!
I and a few others have realized that we have aviation-style headsets which, we're convinced, should be able to be mated to our ham stations.  I've found a little bit of schematic info, enough to tell us that the headphones offer 600-ohm impedance, but I haven't (yet) found any specs on the microphone.

I've found a local ham who rigged a switchbox to allow him to switch his headset from the aircraft radio to his HT while in flight.  This should provide some help, but my interest is to use the headset with my HF rig (in my case, IC-730).

I expect that mating the microphone to the HF rig will require some impedance and level matching, and that we'll have to watch out for DC currents being sent from the rigs.  And of course we'll have to add a PTT or use VOX.

Can anyone provide the specifics?
Thanks - Kevin