Vid cams & intercom.....
 

PPRuNe, this is N-ISH......

Have any of you tried plugging the remote mic input on a video camera into a split off feed from the intercom in a C152 for example? If so, were the results any good? I'd like to get a friend to film a flight and would rather have our voices (and ATC) on the sound track rather than *just* engine noise.....

Any advice?

Cheers,

Nish.

Take care doing things to your intercom. What works well however is either a telephone pickup coil, or a tie-clip microphone sat inside the earpiece of your headset. This is far simpler, very reliable, and doesn't interfere with the intercom.

G

Nishko,

Mic input sockets want mic-level signals (typically microvolts or a millivolt at max.) The intercom probably has levels a thousand times too high for the mic input. All you will hear is massive distortion! You may even blow up the camera's mic input circuitry.

Ghenghis's suggestion about a lapel-mic slipped inside the headset earpiece is a good one and will work infinitely better than just stuffing an output of the intercom directly into the mic input on the camera.

Alternatively, find someone who will make a "pad" to reduce the levels to mic level. A couple of resistors will do it, but the values of the resistors will need to be carefully calculated to get the impedance and level translation just right.

The lapel-mic inside the headset is the best and easiest way to go, and you will have a very nice audio track.

"audio - ten percent of the shoot, ninety percent of the problems in the edit!"

Try a 40db pad from a company called Canford Audio based in Washington Tyne & Wear Or you may get one from your local maplin.

If you tell them what you are trying to do they will have the right answer.

Most video cameras have an automatic level control built in but as mentioned before they can only cope with so much and full line level into the camera socket from the intercom would FUBAR the camera.

I have used the 40db pad lots and it gives great results.... I've also used the clip mic in the headset and that works pretty well too.

Let us know how you get on.

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Backtrack if required

Ah, interesting - does the tie-clip-in-headset method pick up both tx & rx reasonably well?

(I've just bought a camcorder specifically for recording my first outings... 3 weeks at Britannia starts this weekend.)

Yeah that Mic in headset dose work used it about 3 yrs ago worked a treat