ATA 23-40, Yoke Microphone Switch Replacement

A battle that has been fought before is a yoke microphone switch replacement on Sovereign, so this (the second replacement) went somewhat quickly. You're still having to deal with 24 guage wire and some pretty small terminals, but a good pair of hemo's do help.





A small allen wrench is needed to loosen the set screw. Once it has been backed off....... the switch comes out "this" far.





But...... if the yoke center cover is removed.





A tightly packed set of wire bundles can be seen.





They can be pulled out and separated.





With a little wiggling and tugging, some extra wire can be pulled out on the switch side.





Unfortunately, if the switch is ordered without an extra spacer barrel, all the wires have to be cut off to remove the barrel for install on the new switch. This goes against my regular practice of swapping individual wires, one at time, from old switch to new. Marking each wire with tape is a must.

At first glance, it looks like 9 wires are attached. This is kinda a "oh shit" moment knowing the chances are high for a mistake or possibly a crappy solder connection. But..... three wires are just jumpers from the top set of contacts to the bottom set. (The switch assembly must have two internal switches and both sets are wired in parallel as a backup if one set fails.) So in reality, only three wires are coming through the yoke.





One final note..... don't fuck up and put two sets of channel-locks on the un-painted and painted sections of the barrel thinking that's how to loosen it from the switch. It'll result in scraped paint and the damn barrel still in position. If I wasn't a dumb-ass, I would of spun the barrel while holding the actual switch top section.

There was a yellow tag tie-wrapped to the wire bundles in the center of the yoke. My guess.... the whole top section of the yoke can be ordered as an assembly. There are three bundles coming out of the vertical yoke section. These bundles connect to three connectors that are in the handle section. I guess.... the handle assembly can be ordered with all the wires and switches installed. A pretty drastic solution, but still an option if needed.
Triumph Aerospace Systems - P/N 6996170-26