The receive audio from the speaker jack on the rear of the FT101 goes to channel 3 of the mixer via the line-in socket. This speaker is connected not to the radios but to the control room output of the mixer. I don’t, at present, have quality powered monitor speakers, such as Behringer or JVC, but the accessory speaker/phone patch box of the FT101E has a lovely warm sound, so I utilise it for all radios by feeding it via the mixer. The right channel of the main output of the mixer goes to the Icom 706MKIIG accessory socket on the rear of the radio. The left channel goes to the FT101E via the patch socket on the rear panel of the radio, thus providing sufficient audio to drive the FT101E. This is achievable because the main outputs of the mixer go to the two radios via the separate left and right channels. By utilising the pan control on channel 1 of the mixer, I deliver microphone audio to either the Yaesu FT101E or one of my Icom IC706MKIIGs. This channel is stereo so can feed two radios, one via the left channel and one via the right channel. Balanced audio cables provide far superior audio quality. The Heil PR781 microphone is connected to channel 1 of the mixer via a balanced XLR. He recommended the Heil PR781 microphone and encouraged me to utilise the Behringer mixer just as I had planned. I contacted Bob and had a detailed email conversation with him about my plans. I know Bob Heil uses the same mixer in his shack. I already had a bit of equipment that would help- a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer- and felt the addition of a quality microphone and quality speakers would be an ideal match to the mixer. As someone who worked doing front of house sound for rock bands for over 15 years, I was very interested in making some changes to my shack to improve the audio quality on transmit and receive.

Ham radio audio mixer