Tip: Headset Power
 

I cooked up a simple scheme for letting ship's power drive my headsets. They happen to be Zulu, but this will work for any headsets that use AA batts.

Get a DC-DC converter (I got mine from Digikey). For the Zulus, it has to be a fully isolated one, they will barf if you connect power to ship's ground.

Wire up the DC-DC converter with appropriate capacitors and connectors. I also put a bleed load on mine. Mount the connectors near your headset jacks.

Cut some 1/2" wooden dowling to the same length as an AA battery. Drill it through lengthwise and string a wire up through the hole. Put a screw into one end and that's your first battery contact-turned-ship's-power-erminal. Do it twice and you have the other terminal. Mark the dummy-batteries for how they get inserted.

I ended up mounting mine inside the center post between the seats. Hooray, no more headset batteries, no more running out of ANR mid-flight, no more nagging passengers to turn off the headset.

Some headsets, like the Zulus, have to be manually turned on every flight. No big deal.

I do not have a schematic, so please don't ask. This setup is really easy for anyone that knows which end of a soldering iron to hold. I couldn't get Flickr to host the image of the pieces, but here's a link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/illesg/2510424852/

Have fun,
G.

I power mine off the intercom.
 

My PS1000II intercom has a 9 volt output pin. Many ANR headsets work on 9 volts.

Differences
 

That intercom power sounds super-handy.

All the Lightspeeds I've had were 2-AA types. But the general approach is the same, you just cook up a suitable power level, run connectors to the right place, then dummy-up the battery(ies) that your unit needs.

If the headset already has an auxiliary-power input (mine didn't), you get to skip the dummy-battery step.

G.

Pix
 

Just figured out how to post images from Flickr.
Here are the pieces of the kit I described:



The two little black objects are panel-mount power connectors. The faux-battery cable plugs into one of them. Circuit board mounts wherever.

G.