Building a Nieuport 11...

[Mark Thompson]

Frank was reading your building saga. started today got up to page 45 2 am now will start again in the morning after sleep. Cant get enough of you trials and tribulations. maybe I wont get so many when i start my build. I have learned a lot. thank you for this thread.

Mark Thompson
planing stage on
Curtuss Falcon OX-1 /A-3

[Frank Giger]

Thanks for the kind words.

It's all the warts of my build, far more than when I got things just right, as I wanted folks to chime in and correct me.

But it was fun to build. Except when it wasn't. There are times when I think the "Education and Recreation" of building is tilted wayyyy too much towards Education.

[rwanttaja]

Thanks for the kind words.

It's all the warts of my build, far more than when I got things just right, as I wanted folks to chime in and correct me.

But it was fun to build. Except when it wasn't. There are times when I think the "Education and Recreation" of building is tilted wayyyy too much towards Education.

Not to mention the "re-creation" of parts you'd previously built.

I echo my thanks for Frank's candor.

Ron Wanttaja

[Frank Giger]

* blush *

A little break in the weather today - temps in the mid 50's, winds light and variable, and so naturally up and off I went.

The radio thing is getting weird. I brought it home and charged the battery to the max, and was greeted with a minor squeal when transmitting. Not my problem, I decided, as I was legible. Twenty minutes into the flight and I was talking to another pilot in the air - he suggested we make the big cross country over to Pell City (ten miles away!) - and he noted the squeal was gone and I sounded great. I took his word for it, as an open cockpit isn't the best place for nuances of sound.

Coming back in an hour later, the guys in the FBO remarked that the radio was much improved, but had a sort of rushing noise with it. "That would probably be wind," I remarked.

So I'm thinking that battery use is fairly linear with a steady decline, right to the point where it is sensitive to feedback at the top and transmits garbled and then not at all on the bottom end.

I did some casual searches for what a non-TSO small panel mount radio goes for and recoiled in horror from the computer screen. Good grief, a thousand bucks? That's just insane. And we don't have a pull-a-part airplane junkyard here in Alabama, so I guess I'm stuck with the handheld.

[rwanttaja]

I did some casual searches for what a non-TSO small panel mount radio goes for and recoiled in horror from the computer screen. Good grief, a thousand bucks? That's just insane. And we don't have a pull-a-part airplane junkyard here in Alabama, so I guess I'm stuck with the handheld.

Ahem....

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/tech/velcro.html



Ron Wanttaja

[Tralika]

Ron,
That's a good write up on how you installed your handheld. At the end of the article you mention that the output jacks on most handheld radios are mismatched for aviation headsets. I read your article on how to correct the mismatch in the February issue of Kitplanes magazine. Some time ago I owned an experimental glider with no electrical system. I used a little Yaesu handheld when flying and never understood whey it wouldn't work with a Telex single sided headset, now I know. I still have the handheld and use it as a back up. Sometimes I wish I still had the glider too. Anyhow thanks for sharing your knowledge.
John Nealon
Wasilla, Alaska

[Frank Giger]

Ron, you're a gem!

I think I'll generously borrow a few items you pointed out and go a slightly different way.

I intentionally built my seat wider than my butt with the intention of being able to place a handheld next to my hip on one side and something of a similar size on the other.* It's worked out really well with the handheld - even when I inverted on the ground, the handheld didn't fly up - and while I don't have space on my panel to mount like you did, I have a needless switch on it.**

So I'm thinking about putting in a cigarette lighter plug on the outside of the seat (there's just enough room), and running the wire to the switch and relabel it "radio." Then get one of those battery replacers and plug it in right there, since that's what is on the end of it.

I'll run the wires straight from the battery (interrupted by the switch) to the cigarette lighter. Will there be noise from the alternator? Dunno. The direct connect battery thingie says it has a filter.

This allows me to remove the radio and use it for other stuff, like being ground crew for my EAA brothers.

* It dawned on me yesterday when I was flying that there is no reason I can't have my super duper thermos cup with hot coffee with me in the air. Or, in the summer, my super duper thermos cup with hot coffee with me in the air. Since it has a clearly labelled OPEN CLOSE lever on it and does not leak when closed, I don't even need a cup holder.

** Read back a few pages on the charging saga. That alternator switch is nice, but unnecessary, and I'm going to delete that part of the circuit.

[rwanttaja]

I think I'll generously borrow a few items you pointed out and go a slightly different way.

Absolutely! I'm the first to admit that my solution was, probably, more complex than most people would want. But I didn't have a good spot in the cockpit to mount the handheld itself. In any case, no one MAKES a handheld as small as the A5 any more. That makes it tougher find a home for it, on a panel.

The opportunity to look at a whole new installation has me in the raised eyebrow, fingertips-tapping-together mode. Some thoughts:

1. If you want to be able to pull the radio out of the airplane to use it at fly-ins, you might not want to use the battery eliminator. That would mean you'd have to carry the battery pack with you (anyway) and switch it out when you took the radio out of the plane.

An alternative approach would be to use the NiMh battery pack, with dohickey that connects to the charging contacts on the stock battery. Connect the other end of the dohickey to a small jack on the outside of the plane, and charge the battery occasionally.

Or...get the battery pack that takes standard alkaline AA cells, and carry spares in the plane.

2. One thing that's very nice is having the jacks for the headset solidly mounted in the panel or a side panel. Beats having the floppy adaptors hanging around, and makes neat cord runs easy.

3. If you build or modify a headset to match the Icom's characteristics, it no longer needs to comply with the standard aviation 0.25"/0.206" jack format. My under-helmet headsets use standard 1/8" plugs. You can put the same size jacks in your plane and save some space...and it'd let you plug a set of standard ear buds in.

I have an adaptor cable that connects my under-helmet headsets to the standard aviation jacks, but if I ever work on the plane, I'm going to change the plane jacks to a smaller size. Probably a 1/8" and 3/32" one to keep the size difference for headphones and mikes.

4. As has been mentioned, "headset adapters" for handhelds handle the ELECTRICAL connection, but the impedances are off for the headphone portion. Most aviation headsets work, but they lose about 6 dB of sound energy. You can boost the sound volume by using a headset with 8-ohm speakers. I've got an expanded version of the Kitplanes article at:

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/tech/amplitude.html

Ron Wanttaja

[Frank Giger]

I read the "convert a headset" articles and came away a bit bugeyed.

I have the 6 AA battery for the handset.

A quick rundown on my "setup:"

Basically, it's just the radio laying on the seat next to me, with a coax cable for the antenna snaking up and forward to the rubber duck antenna I mounted on the windscreen. I moved it there thinking that having it behind the seat next to the aluminum tubing was causing the squealing. It wasn't, but I'll take the hit on the WWI looks for a better antenna position.

I've got the conversion cable thingie for the headset that plugs into the handset and then the headset, with the PTT switch that goes with it. It just snakes up to the headset on that side of me without any fuss, and I just tuck the excess cable down around the handset.

The PTT switch is a bit of a compromise, as I never found a good place to put it. So I just wrap the velcro ribbon around the first two fingers of my left hand and have it pointing to the side. It's kind of make due, but is comfortable, keeps the cable away from anything important, and works.

One of the other things I'm going to have to do is crack out the book on the handset and reprogram it. I set it up when I was based out of Pell City, so Talladega isn't in the middle of the channels - or at the end. I'm going to put it and the AWOS first, and then configure the freqs based on distance from there.

So it will be Talladega AWOS, Talladega traffic, Pell City (okay, St. Clair Co) AWOS, Pell City traffic, then Anniston, then Gadsden, then Sylacauga (everything in my 25 mile test flight area). Just for fun I may put in Shelby County, Albertville, and Fort Payne.

I don't have a problem of carrying a battery with me - I'm not the fly-in type of guy, so it will be rare - and almost always wear cargo pants, so stuffing a handset in one isn't a big deal for me.

[Dana]

When I had the squealing problem with my Icom A24, I found the antenna had to be a significant distance away from the rest of the wiring, I don't think on the windshield would cut it. On my Kolb I had the antenna on the bottom of the plane pointing down, about under my knees. On my Fisher it was on top of the top wing.