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Extending audio or screened cable to headset jacks

chris mitchell

Well Known Member
Patron
After 95 hours it is obvious to me that I have put the P1 headset jacks too far forward and as a result the headset lead is trailing in my way. I'd like to move the jacks back to the vicinity of my right elbow. Of course, the leads will need to be about 15 inches or so longer. I would prefer not to have to redo all the wiring from the radio to the jacks and would prefer just to extend the leads, which of course are "screened".

Is such a thing feasible or will I inevitably get an big increase in noise because of the inevitable break and short section of unscreened wire?? I had thought that the cores could be joined with crimps, and the screening connected by terminating using a presoldered ring and short length (may be 1 inch or so??) of say 22awg to join the two screened sections (I hope that's an adequate description).

Thanks

Chris
 
I was going to suggest you call Stein----then noticed your location, so here is what I advise.

Email Stein. Or use PM.
 
One to two inches...

After 95 hours it is obvious to me that I have put the P1 headset jacks too far forward and as a result the headset lead is trailing in my way. I'd like to move the jacks back to the vicinity of my right elbow. Of course, the leads will need to be about 15 inches or so longer. I would prefer not to have to redo all the wiring from the radio to the jacks and would prefer just to extend the leads, which of course are "screened".

Is such a thing feasible or will I inevitably get an big increase in noise because of the inevitable break and short section of unscreened wire?? I had thought that the cores could be joined with crimps, and the screening connected by terminating using a presoldered ring and short length (may be 1 inch or so??) of say 22awg to join the two screened sections (I hope that's an adequate description).

Thanks

Chris

...of unscreened wire will be OK at our frequencies.

Just keep the unscreened center conductor short and keep the ground pigtails (if you do it that way) short also.

The most important bit is to secure the whole assembly well so as not to put any loads on the joints. Creative use of heatshrink would work well.

AeroElectric Bob shows this in a pictorial...

http://www.matronics.com/aeroelectric/articles/Shielded_Wire_Splicing/S_Wire_Splice.html
 
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Splicing a shielded audio wire (microphone, headphone, or music input) is perfectly fine. In fact there are cheap intercom systems for production spamcans that use unshielded wire even for the microphone jacks :eek: and it usually is never a problem.

The only shielded wires on an airplane that you really don't want to solder-splice are any antenna coax that carries RF, or your shielded P-leads that run from the mags to your ignition switch. And on the antenna coax, you can always use a male + female pair of BNC connectors together in lieu of a soldered splice.
 
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