Sound controls
Leave a comment3. March 2015 by Peter
Last time I had a visitor to the cockpit we did an online flight. As we both had to listen to the Vatsim ATC I found a Y-splitter and plugged in my headset and a set of earplugs from my iPhone. Did not work very well. So I did some rethinking. Because actually I would like to be able to have the ATC sound out through a set of speakers as well.
So I had to connect 2 headsets (CPT + F/O) and two speakers. Too much of a job for the sound supplied from the computer.
So from my friends at eBay I bought a small amplifier board (2×15 watt) at $6. Further more I bought 2 speakers of 8w at 8 ohm. Those I bought is 7 cm wide. Make sure not to buy them too small. Mine were $8 for two.
So to day I made two sound control panels, one for the captains side and one for the first officer. On both sides the panel will be installed into the rear part of the last eyebrow window.
The F/O panel has 2 jack plugs for headset speaker end microphone. The Captains panel has the same, but also a volume control for the two speakers.
The amplifier only supplies stereo exit (=2). So both speakers are connected to one side and the two headsets are power via the other side.
To adjust the volume you should use potentiometers with a value of 2K. Those I had at hand were only 1K and that is not enough. 2K should be enough.
On this version 1 the microphones from both headsets will be connected using a Y-splitter. At some point I might use a relay to switch between input from the captains or first officer headset. But that will be a ver2 at some later point.