SW1 F1 1A V1 13.

L1 1m C2 2u

R1 470

LED1 CQX37A

C1 25u TR1 +

SW2

N1

N2

P1 1k

R2 220

D C H E AD SE T

N1

N2

TR2

P IN 4 P IN 4 P IN 5 Y aes u H E A D S E T AU D I O O U T R J 45 F E M A L P IN 5

M ale To 8 57 R J -45

DE JOH N W9WLS

DAVID CLARK HEADSET ADAPTOR

The above circuit is an adaptation of the TEST circuit sent to me by an engineer at the David Clark Company used for testing the M1-dc microphone commonly used on several models of their aviation and automotive headsets. I had built this for use with my Yaesu FT-857-d transceiver in my truck for long trips to middle Georgia and back so that I could operate H.F. and not have the XYL complaining about the AIR-NOISE. I have since built one into a switching box for use with my Icom IC-756, utilizing the voltage available in the Icom mic. Connector, this also will work with the IC-735. THE CIRCUIT TR1 & TR2 are 600 ohm 1:1 audio transformers; the ones I used in the mobile version are MIL-SPEC miniatures from the junk box of a friend, I believe there are some still available from RADIO-SHAFT but dont expect much in quality there, I have had better luck with PULLS from the old BELL C-500 ( a bit big but workable ) telephone sets, but any decent quality transformers that will fit into your enclosure should do.

The RJ female connector is to match the one on the radio (FT-857 in my case) to allow plugging in the hand mic for keying and non-headset use but allow easy switching back and forth . L1 & C2, are something that you will have to play with. I discovered after building the original circuit that it worked fine with the truck shut off and while under load, but with the truck running at an idle or with the engine under 1000 R.P.M. there was a noticeable WHINE on F.M. (didnt seem to matter on S.S.B.) from the alternator, so you might have to tweak the values for a given installation. R2 & P1, I added P1 as an after thought to adjust the gain, this is something else you might want to play with, or not. The LED is nothing more than an IDIOT LIGHT to keep me from trying to talk to the wrong mic. , with the assortment of automotive accessories using red leds, I would recommend using some other color (except white) blue, green, or amber in that order would be my choices for night vision preservation purposes. OTHER THINGS WORTH MENTIONING: Some of the DC headsets I have worked with have an attenuation circuit built into the ear muff on the incoming audio line; you might want to bypass this circuit so that you dont get blown out of the cab when switching back to the cabin speaker from the headset. The headsets I worked with all had inch TRS plugs , the drawing above depicts the TRS jack in that order , left to right , with the tip (T) being the audio from the radio, the ring(R) being the mic. From the headset, and the shield (S) grounded for both. All of the M1-DC microphones have a GAIN control built in to them which may or may not need tweaking. You will also notice there is no KEYING circuit in the drawing; I left this out on purpose due to others who might use this adaptation for other radios that may require something special in their keying routine ( just lay the regular hand mic in my lap and key the xmtr with it in the truck, and use a foot switch or vox or the ptt on the station mic in the house). Also worth mentioning is that I used the transformers to avoid GROUND LOOP problems in the audio circuits (this was a strong recommendation from Yaesu tech support) and might be a very good idea for other brands of radios. I see no reason that this circuit would not be adaptable to other types of aviation / automotive headsets besides DAVID CLARK, BUT unless you have good service information on your headset it would be better to contact the manufacture and find out exactly what your working with rather than to take a chance and trash a good headset (or RADIO).

It might be possible to use this with computer type headsets (for weight considerations ) but I have not tried this as yet. 73 & Good Hamming! DE: John W9WLS AMENDUM : 8/3/10 Just for the heck of it, I grabbed some jumpers and an older cell phone head set and jumped the 2.5 mm headset plug into the inch TRS connector on the box . IT WORKED ! Had to adjust the mic. gain on the radio up a bit , but it did work so I now see no reason that a light weight cell phone headset will not (or cannot be adapted) to work with this circuit also. You might also want to take a look at a couple of articles by N1GY that have been published in QST . These deal with adapting computer and cell phone headsets for use with ham radio.