Radio Speaker for ASW27

A couple of months ago, I posted a report of my problems with a Dittel FSG 71M connected to a Visaton FRS7 speaker, which was installed by the AS factory. Several people asked that I keep them informed with what I find in researching the problem. Here is the latest.

As you may recall, one respondent thought that the problem was with the covering that the factory uses for the speaker. They thought that the covering might be made of an air-tight material. This proved to not be true of the '27 that was delivered to me.

This only left 2 possibilities. The problem was either the radio or the speaker.

I finally made it over the mountains from my house to Minden, where the glider is located, last week so that I could do a test.

I took with me two speakers:

1) A Visaton FRS7, that was a duplicate of the speaker that was installed at the AS factory.

2) A 4-ohm 3-1/2-inch Car Speaker from Radio Shack

<snip> Go to www.digikey.com and enter 'speaker' in the search window. - They list 72 different sizes. You can view drawings for each one.

Dan Your experience was almost identical to mine. Please let me know if you find a speaker that a)works and b) fits in the hole

For what it's worth, I have a new ASH-26E with same radio and assume same speaker and it worksd just fine. With the engine running, I crank the volume way up and it sound quite clear.

-Tom

The current status is that Dittel wants me to send the Visaton and Radio Shack speakers to their service shop with the radio. Since the radio is in the glider, and the glider is a 9-hour round-trip drive away, it will take a while before I get a chance to respond to their request. By the way, so far, Dittel has been very responsive to my requests for help.

I'll post the results.

-Dan

I just had an idea. From several reports, it seems that this radio/speaker works in some gliders and not in several others. I wonder if the problem might be that the Visaton speaker (as opposed to Radio Shack speaker) distorts if the positive and negative leads are reversed. I know that when I replaced the Visaton speaker installed by AS with the one provided by Easter Sailplane, I make sure that I used the same polarity. I didn't try reversing it.

-Dan