Intercom

This thing looks very easy to install but was a real challenge
from where to put it to how to hook it up. 

We complicated our lives by having terminal strips that everything run through. Our goal was that if we had troubles we wouldn't have to dismantle the ship to get at the connections and trouble shoot everything.  We also wanted the capability to change the switches around in case we added something later on.

Where it really made life tough was splitting the grounds on the intercom, they are supposed to run from point A to point B in shielded wiring so the wire doesn't pick up noise.  We had a real ball in doing that and at one point we were about to scrap the terminal strip idea all together but alas, we got it lol.

 
The unit we chose was made by PS Engineering right here in good ole Tennessee about 30 minutes from our home and home grown stuff is good Yes?.

We didn't order the run of the mill unit, we wanted one with Hot Mic Capability

so they had to make it up special for us for some reason.  What that means is you add an extra switch to the setup and when you turn it on the pilot and passenger can chat without having to hit the intercom button every time.  It's a neat unit because when you get a radio transmission it automatically cuts the intercom off on the fly and enables the transmission to come in never missing a beat.  It has many more things to like a music input and the ability to allow only the pilot to hear com transmissions and not the passenger and on and on.  One of the reasons we chose a high end unit was to avoid that getting every other word thing when you have squelch enabled, but from playing with it in the garage it was as bad as the other units we've witnessed.  When we started flying our heli the first thing we noticed was how clear everything sounded, it's so good you wouldn't believe it. Anyhow we had to wait two extra weeks for this unit that we could have driven down the street to pick up but they had to ship it to Aircraft Spruce in Atlanta, Georgia, (the place we ordered it from) and then back here to town to us lol go figure!!

After going to RotorWay for my Phase I, II and III sessions I was so glad I bought good equipment it wasn't funny.

What ever they use out there is either purely junk or installed by dummys because you can't make out but every 3rd word or so when the towers are talking to you.  When I was at Rotorway for my Phase III training I discovered an anamoly about the RotorWay factory ships.  When you turn up one headset it takes volume from the other one which means either the student or the CFI can hear but seldom both unless you fool with them a bunch prior to flight. It was Wednesday afternoon and our 6th flight of the week before we finally got them figured out and both of us could hear everything.

Moral to the story is buy the best you can afford and you wont be as sorry as you will if you go with the cheap stuff.

We first mounted the intercom like this

but later decided to incorporate a few other items into this spot like circuit breakers along with an easy way to get the fuel shut off cable out of the floor pan.

It needed to be that way so we wouldn't have take the whole thing loose all the way back to the fuel shut off valve in the event we ever had to R&R our floor pan.

First things first,

we made a pattern and then cut it from some 1/8 inch aluminum stock we had in our goody pile.

It needed to be strong enough to take the pushing and pulling

of the fuel shut off pull handle. We then had to add a doubler in to make it a little stronger plus create a non stripable hole so the cable itself would be locked into position so it couldn't rotate in its mount. The next thing we added was a hinge on the front of the plate to attatch the main instrument panel to.  The idea here was to be able to tilt the main panel back out of the pod and the hinge would keep the panel from being able to fall into the pod plus hold it in position while we worked on whatever we were tending to at the time.

 
In the end the heat and fresh air push, pull knobs foiled that idea because they were so close they stop the panels path.  If we take the push pull cable ends loose we can easily remove them and it works but it makes it a pain.

END