Thursday, July 6, 2023

Cannibalizing an airplane headset

 

For experiments i needed a plug to make some connections. As, during the years i have collected airplane headsets i decided to cannibalize one and change it in a test wire, keeping the audio plug on one side and putting crocodile clips on the other side. 
I did cut the wire and removed some of the plastic insulation. The wires in the airplane headset where even more thin than i expected. Just a a thin metal wire with a thin layer coating on on it. I scratched away the thin coating and after measuring the connections i soldered a small wire to it and put new insulation using  heat shrink.
For the three distinct connections i wanted different colors. I had some new black and red alligator clips. Black is used for the common and red for the signal at the tip. An old, not so good, white alligator clip was also used. (On the photo it looks more yellow.) I cleaned the white "alligator jacket" and put the "jacket" on a new good "alligator".  The white alligator clip is for the for the middle ring of the plug.
The ear/hearing parts of the airplane headset where not needed yet. However as i already had the heat shrink with hot air gun and my soldering iron and some parts i decided to also make new connections on them.
To one earpiece i added alligator clips, to the other two banana plugs. I hope by adding this connections the hurdle to also use this earpieces, e.g. for a quick test, will be a lot lower. The earpieces where tested with my signal generator and they did work correct.

No comments: