Sometime ago an Avon S10 gasmask came into my possesion. I personally think it looks rather cool. But that is not the point of this post. The mask has a plethora of features, from drinking tubes to very thought-thru air circulation. But more importantly for this article: the S10 has a “secondary speech module” on its side, where you are able to add an external microphone for use with radios or other means of communication.

The microphone itself clips onto the side of the S10 fairly easily. Its connector, however, is a little trickier. It uses a British military standard called “Clansman”, which contains a set of three pins in a locking connector. Procuring the microphone module was fairly simple, I got it from eBay for cheap. Finding a receptacle for it, however, was not. So it was time to make one!

After stuffing some jumper cables in the connector, just to check if the microphone even worked. Which it did! (more about that below) I decided to 3D print a fitting connector to ruggedise the setup a little more:

This design allows you to stuff three normal jumper cables in, add some hot glue and shrinkwrap. In my experience it works well, I’ve had no issues yet.
Electrical setup
The electrical setup is very simple. You have one ground and two pins for the microphone. Building an adapter to convert it to regular audio cabling is a trivial task.
Pinout of the Clansman microphone, if anyone should need it:

A few more photos


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