wilkersk
Pattern Altitude
I believe I may have run into a "first".
A friend of mine, who is the owner and operator of an FBO had me look at the intercom on his personal airplane. It seems every time he connected his bluetooth headset to the mic jack, the volume of the "tunes" in his headset would decrease by half. Unplugged, he could listen to tunes by pairing his iPhone to his headset. As soon as the mic jack touched the plug, bluetooth audio volume would go very low.
This aircraft was using a portable PTT through a complicated arrangement of jacks and plugs, and the installer had done some non-standard wiring, such that I thought it best to just re-wire the intercom. So, rewired it and mounted new fixed PTT switches in the pilot and copilot's yokes.
Now, the fun part. The original gripe still exists. Plus, now with the intercom turned on, there's no PTT from either side. With the intercom turned off, the pilot's side works great and bluetooth audio is not attenuated. (Yes, I checked the wiring per Sigtronic's troubleshooting guide)
I rang out all the wires, and they are good. It looks to me like there's an internal failure of the intercom, which is a first for me. After installing or correcting the installation (for non-standard wiring and weird audio gripes) of probably a dozen of these panel mounted intercoms, I have never before run into one I couldn't fix by repairing, or correcting the wiring.
What makes me feel confident enough to say "its the box". Sigtronics says if the intercom fails, turn it off and the pilot should still be able to use the radio normally; which is exactly what's happening.
A friend of mine, who is the owner and operator of an FBO had me look at the intercom on his personal airplane. It seems every time he connected his bluetooth headset to the mic jack, the volume of the "tunes" in his headset would decrease by half. Unplugged, he could listen to tunes by pairing his iPhone to his headset. As soon as the mic jack touched the plug, bluetooth audio volume would go very low.
This aircraft was using a portable PTT through a complicated arrangement of jacks and plugs, and the installer had done some non-standard wiring, such that I thought it best to just re-wire the intercom. So, rewired it and mounted new fixed PTT switches in the pilot and copilot's yokes.
Now, the fun part. The original gripe still exists. Plus, now with the intercom turned on, there's no PTT from either side. With the intercom turned off, the pilot's side works great and bluetooth audio is not attenuated. (Yes, I checked the wiring per Sigtronic's troubleshooting guide)
I rang out all the wires, and they are good. It looks to me like there's an internal failure of the intercom, which is a first for me. After installing or correcting the installation (for non-standard wiring and weird audio gripes) of probably a dozen of these panel mounted intercoms, I have never before run into one I couldn't fix by repairing, or correcting the wiring.
What makes me feel confident enough to say "its the box". Sigtronics says if the intercom fails, turn it off and the pilot should still be able to use the radio normally; which is exactly what's happening.
