Microphones

Basic operation

A microphone converts sound into an electrical signal. Externally in its simplest form a microphone consists of a PTT (Press To Talk)button, a mouthpiece and a cable to connect it to the transceiver. More sophisticated microphones have extra "buttons" to achieve functions such as proramming, changing frequencies and channels and controlling tone genneration for modes such as IRLP and Echolink.

Internally all microphones have a transducer which converts sound energy into electrical energy. Most commonly, a thin membrane is used to capture sound energy by vibrating in response to sound waves striking it. The movement of the membrane is then used to generate an electric current.