Whichever switch you choose, I'd recommend not putting it at the top of the
tower.
We had a bad experience with an Ameritron RCS box last year during WPX. The
switch, mounted at the 150' level on a 200' rotating tower, decided it
didn't want to work anymore. The control unit kept popping fuses and
wouldn't last more than a few minutes once the fuse was replaced.
The result was that we couldn't select any antenna on that tower, which
included a 2 element 80m yagi at 200' and a 7/7/7 stack on 15m. That's a
lot of hardware to lose because of a $170 switch.
Had it been mounted near ground level, a quick hack would have been to go
outside and insert a barrel connector to regain use of either antenna. We
could have done that even at night (which is when it happened) to get the
80m yagi back if the switch wasn't 150' off the ground.
Also, you mentioned tri-feeding the C31XR. Is there any reason other than
SO2R that you would do that? It seems thats heading in the direction of the
SixPak (a fine switch by the way... I've used one for 3 years now without
incident)
73,
Tom, NI1N
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Dougherty" <w2irt@comcast.net>
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 11:30 PM
Subject: [TowerTalk] Ameritron and Array Solutions antenna
switches -question
> All this talk about Ameritron and A/S antenna relays has just hit my
> radar screen and I have a question. First off, I know and respect Jay
> tremendously, have bought from him in the past, will do so again (and
> again and again), but on this issue, I'm curious. What does Jay's RAT
> Pack or SIX PACK do than the Ameritron RCS- series boxes don't do?
>
> I was thinking of buying the RCS-12 automatic remote switch at Dayton
> but now I'm thinking a little and would really like to understand
> what the primary differences are. I run single-op pretty well
> exclusively. I'm planning on converting 4 runs of RG-213 going up the
> tower now to just one run of 1/2" Heliax (with one of the 213 lines
> available as backup), then a remote switch at the top with 3 yagis
> and an inverted vee.
>
> I'd like to consider switching the C31XR over to tri-feed at the same
> time as my 40m yagi goes up this summer, so that would complicate
> matters, of course.
>
> Power-wise I run an Ameritron AL-1200 for the moment fed with a Mark
> V. It'll coast at legal limit with about 110W in.
>
> I also have a second HF transceiver that I was thinking of adding to
> the mix, hence my interest in the six-pack. But if I keep it simple
> and just go with a straight-forward remote coax switch, what would
> Jay's products do (at extra cost) that the Ameritron wouldn't? Since
> I'm not a high-performance station compared to contest stations with
> stacks, etc, would one of the fancier switches be overkill for my needs?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter,
> W2IRT
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
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>
>
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