Simulator intercoms

[Jimmy94]

Hi,

I've been enlisted to build a communication system for a B737 simulator. I'd be interested to know if anyone has built an intercom system on their simulator to allow voice comms between the pilots and also between the pilot and someone acting as ATC using PTT, as I could use some advice on where to get started.

Cheers

[fsaviator]

Short Answer:  separate usb soundcards for each position

Long answer:  buy a used sigtronics or flightcom four-place intercom on ebay (between $80-$120).

Easy answer:  Cockpit Intercom (RAI-2) by Ruscool http://www.ruscool.co.nz/control_boards.html

[Trevor Hale]

I would Follow Warren's Advice or go with his "LONG ANSWER"  Most aviation Intercoms have a 1/8" output from them and a 1/8" Input to them.  So basically the intercom acts as it would in a regular aircraft in that you can talk to each other, Your soundcard output would be wired 1/8" to 1/8" to the input so you could hear your FS Sounds in the headphones.  and you take the output from the intercom to your sound card line in.

The only disadvantage to this feature is if others are talking ATC will hear everything including your fs sounds.

Trev

[navymustang]

There are also a number of venders for these devices on the net.  I am using the following device to handle my intercom.

https://www.flightsounds.com/fsx-dual

Jim

[blueskydriver]

I did it with 2 sound cards in the FSX box, with 1 for the enviromental sounds and the other 1 just for the headsets. Let's call that a vocal card, so that vocal card has two headsets plugged into it using 2 y adapters. One for the mc side and the other for the headset speakers, and that gives both the exact same levels when adjusting the volume sliders. Then, you would adjust the individual volumes at the headsets themselves.

Next, in a different computer that is using Squawkbox for onlne ATC, I use a sound card (call it ATC Card) on it too get the ATC communcation, with a PTT used via FSUIPC to make the calls. The trick is with the vocal card on the FSX machine and this ATC card. You have too loop the input/outputs into each other. In otherwords, the mic side goes into the vocal card, then from the vocal card using a line out level (not mic level) it goes into the ATC Card via line level input. From there it goes back out to the headsets via speaker level.

Now, this gives me intercom and PTT with ATC; however, I am using two of the same type computer based headsets. I could use real aircraft headsets by using a couple of homemade connector boxes that change the connectors from 1/8 to the 1/4 or with an adapter to change them to the standard mini type connector (the styles most all computers use). You would also need a 9 volt battery in each box to change the level of the mic from the aircraft headsets.

Finally, there is one thing you did not mention. What type of simulator software are you going too use, FSX, XPLANE, P3D? And, what ATC are you talking about? If you mean online ATC like VATSIM or PilotEdge, what I described above will work just fine. However, if you mean something like a software type ATC program that you say predefined statements, it would still work, but you would'nt need a second computer with squawkbox or an ATC Card. Assuming you are using FSX or P3D, it would be the same either way you went, but Xplane would be different for the ATC software predefined responses because I don't think Xplane has anything like that yet.

Still, you can purchase the items the other builders mentioned to get intercoms and no need for homemade adapter boxes, but if you really want true seperation from enviromental sounds and ATC with PTT, even with the purchased items, you'd have too do it the way I described. Somewhere, I posted how I did this in a different thread, please search for it using the search box...

Best Regards,

John

[fsaviator]

I amend my initial post to change Long answer to John's post 

Just kidding!

[Jimmy94]

Thank you all for your incredibly helpful replies.

John, sim software is Xplane but as for the ATC it will literally just be another person next to the simulator with their own headset so no software required for that.

James