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Not knowing what it will take to switch two radios back and forth between antennas, one linear, etc., I tried to envision what would be needed. Below is what I understand I will need. I hope to be able to use both radios at the same time (Thus the complicated RF cabling and switching) Is this correct? Email me (my call@mycall.net -- substitute "w4ish" for "mycall") if I have forgotten anything or have misunderstood what is needed. (Click on the picture to view it enlarged) Below you will see my vision of the antennas I will have (I live on a farm, so there is plenty of room.) The antennas will consist of the following: 160 Meter full wave horizontal loop I believe in grounding all towers (I have a small, 40 foot crank up, and hope to put up a 70 foot tower for the WiFi antenna) Here is my cabling scheme from the shack to the tower:
Below is my latest version February 2010) of the RF and control switching in my shack: This works well, although I have some ideas to add to it later. (Note that I can have either ABCD data to the Amplifier, or I can send actual band switching data to the amplifier. I will not use both at the same time)(Also, I only have one Station Master at this time. A configuration of two Band Decoder circuit boards are presently configured to switch the second radio. The circuit boards with small signal relay on them to switch the various control lines are my own design. Maybe I will put those circuit board layouts on this site sometime.) I can see that most relays would be eliminated if I had two amplifiers! But right now my budget will not allow that.
May 2010 -- Well, a lot of time has passed since the above ideas were put down... I've learned that all of the switching in the above diagram is too many wires for this one old ham to take care of. Everything worked.. sort of. There was always something going wrong, wiring that had to be traced down to see why it was not working, and the number of wires got to be more than my brain could process (even when I labeled them, I still got confused.) So, I decided to simplify. The first concession is to purchase a second amplifier. That will reduce the number of relays from about 50 above, to about 15. I also will use separate microphones for each radio. Finally, I decided to set up a third, remote operating position in a warmer section of my house and next to my recliner. This will be my winter operating position! Cables will run through the basement to the shack and operate the equipment from there. Now my total of relays just jumped back up to about 30 -- still simpler than the above. So, the diagram below is what I ended up with: (And this is my final answer!)
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