Expensive Desktop Mic Get Pwned By $12 VOIP Headset

A while back I purchased an entire amateur radio set from a ham who was getting out of the hobby. A rare occurrence, mind you. I really only wanted the radio (a Yaesu FT-1000D) but the guy sold me everything except the feedlines and antennas for less than I'd expected to pay for the radio. Everything worked as expected. In the plethora of boxes I lugged home were a lot of accessories; among them a West Mountain Radio RigBlaster Pro.

The RigBlaster sat in storage for almost a year, until recently when I watched K7AGE on YouTube talking about his homebrew Bluetooth headset interface. One of the accessories which came with the FT-1000D was a Yaesu MD-100A8X desk mic. I've frankly been less than pleased with performance of that mic; it's very sensitive to any change in sound level due to distance from my mouth which means that keeping the FT-1000D's ALC from kicking requires that I constantly ride the PA drive control--and that's tough to do when I'm focused on maintaining a constant mouth-to-mic distance. So I started thinking about getting a headset. Of course, you can spend a ton of money on a "good" headset; e.g. Heil Sound is the name in radio mics and headgear and their stuff starts over $100 and goes up from there. Being the cheapskate I am I decided to experiment with a $12 General Electric VOIP headset I got from Target to do Skype while I was traveling through Asia in 2006.

Interface to Yaesu was a snap using the RigBlaster. As with most amateur radio accessory companies, West Mountain Radio's website and manuals are poorly written but I was able to decipher them enough to set the jumpers properly for the Yaesu. Most computer headsets are have electret voice elements which require a 5 VDC bias on the ring terminal; the RigBlaster can provide bias on the MIC2 jack which also happens to be the perfect size for a PC headset plug. I didn't bother to route any of the receive audio paths; for now I just have the receive side plugged into the headphone jack. I have the MD-100 plugged into the RigBlaster--just in case--but its primary function now is to act as a PTT switch.

The results were impressive. I checked in to the 75M late night net and got an unsolicited report of "great sounding audio" from W6EZV. A flattering report, considering that the 75M late night guys are used to hearing perfectly processed and equalized audio from people like W6OBB aka Art Bell. I'm now able to operate with both hands free, and the headphone has an added benefit of making sure the receive audio is not bothering my family after they've gone to bed. My audio settings are a lot more consistent and don't require constant fussing with the PA drive and speech processor levels. Best of all I'm no longer inclined to go out and spent hundreds of dollars to get a high-end Heil headset. I'm now curious to find out if my successful experiment is unique to this particular VOIP headset or if I can get the same results with other brands.

Pimp My Rig

During the recent severe storms we lost power at home a few times. I had my radios on battery power monitoring various emergency frequencies but at times I was struggling to read some of my equipment with non-backlit displays. A small LED flashlight worked well in a pinch, but afterwards I started to think about how I might improve the lighting at my station without using wall-socket power and/or consuming a lot of my station's reserve battery power.

The answer came to me while I was wandering around a Target store. There's a company called WinPlus that makes a line of auto accessories under the brand name "Type-S"; they offer a lot of dashboard gizmos, LED map lights, gadget holders, etc. Their stuff is actually quite well-conceived, for the most part. One of the items they sell is a "Dash Mood Light Set" which consists of two small "LEDs in a barrel" with 3M adhesive-backed swivel-mounts and a "cigarette lighter" accessory plug. Setup was very simple; all I had to do was plug in the lights (using an accessory socket) and stick the swivel-mounts on the radio faceplates. The lights draw less than 10 mA of current and provide great illumination of the displays even in total darkness. The wires are very slender so I was able to tape them down with black electrical tape and now they're essentially invisible.

What a day....

So today was quite a day. The stock market (and my 401k) tanked on job data and high oil prices. Britney Spears got carted away for observation at a mental hospital after a standoff with police. And the Silicon Valley got slammed by a major storm that toppled trees, knocked over my backyard fence, ripped the roof off of our rental property (complete with flying roof tiles smashing a car window in the process), and bending my Comet CHA-250BX antenna. I'd probably be more upset by all this (except the Britney Spears part) if not for the fact that I'm sick as a dog right now with some kind of nasty virus.

I'm hopeful that the amount of misery in any given year is limited and that I'm getting all of my ick for 2008 out of the way early.