My aircraft has one that’s basically mounted on a piece of Meccano attached to the control coloumn and they are constantly failing apart. And I’m sure the maintainance company just get the replacements from Maplin.
So does anybody know a source of really good quality last for life push to talk buttons?
Here and search for “CWS switch”. That is a high quality sealed switch made by OTTO in the USA. It is of the order of 20 quid. It is a push fit into the yoke hole
The switch you are thinking of, usually bought from Maplin, is about 20p and is crap. Maplin have gone bust…
But is occassionally used in avionics work.
The other company which makes nice milspec switches is APEM in France. They are used on the TBM.
These milspec switches appear on Ebay from time to time.
Honeywell also bought up a load of companies over the years which make milspec switches but a lot of them are quite badly made, especially some of the toggle switches. They just got approvals some decades ago so they carry on…
Thank you.
Yes the one they use is the one at the bottom and it is crap.
Great forum this.
Searching ebay.co.uk for
otto push button switch
produces a load of hits showing suitable switches, mostly from the USA, but occassionally from Israel which often produces very interesting results.
The PTT switch should be hermetically sealed, in case of a fuel leak into the cockpit.
Peter wrote:
The PTT switch should be hermetically sealed, in case of a fuel leak into the cockpit.
Do you mean that a PTT switch could cause a spark? How?
Just asking…
