I recently purchased a Heil headset for my old Ten-Tec Omni C.  For those that have one, you already know they don’t come with a PTT switch!  I’m too cheap and broke to buy one of the nice Heil ones (to go with my used Proset Micro Dual) (not that I think the Heil ones are overpriced – they’re $26 in the latest ham store catalog I received).

So I found a piece of scrap 2×4 and had an extra momentary switch lying around.  Sounds like a PTT footswitch to me!

The first part was to drill a few holes – one for the switch and one for the wire out back.

Note: in the second picture, there are two additional holes.  Those are from nails or screws in this scrap 2×4’s past life.  You can ignore those.

The next part was to feed the wires through.  I used a piece of #14 wire to help with this.

Next, obviously was to solder the switch.

Finally, the wires were gently fed back through the hole, tested for continuity (open while the switch was not pressed, and shorted when the switch was pressed) and quickly tested with the radio into a dummy load.

That’s it!  Granted, it doesn’t look as polished as some of the manufactured models out there, but since I don’t feel like dropping $26 on a nice footswitch right now, this will do.

-73-