I've had a single 4-el SteppIR for about 2 1/2 years and I'm in the process
of building a 3-stack of 4-el SteppIRs. I'm familiar with the control box
design but haven't actually done what you're suggesting.
According to the SteppIR documentation, multiple controllers can be
daisy-chained so that changing the frequency on the first controller will
change it on the others. There are two RS-232 ports on each controller, Data
In and Data Out. If used, a transceiver is connected to Data In on the first
controller. The Data Out port on the first controller is connected to the
Data In port on the second controller, and so-on. A null modem cable is used
to connect Data Out to Data In.
I elected not to use this method for my 3-stack because my MicroHam stack
switch can route any one of the stacked antennas to an AUX port for use by a
second radio. That means sometimes I'd want the controllers daisy-chained
and sometimes not. But it doesn't appear that the slave capability can be
easily turned off from the front panel of the SteppIR controller.
But there's more to it. SteppIRs can be automatically tuned to the frequency
of an attached transceiver, and I find this capability very useful. But in
my SO2R contest station I have two radios that use different communications
protocols: an Orion and an FT-1000D. Switching a given controller between
the two radios isn't simple. The RS-232 port has to be switched with relays
and the protocol has to be changed from the SteppIR control box menu (and
the controller power has to be cycled.) You can see that this problem gets
even more complicated with three controllers.
To solve the problem with my single SteppIR, I built a PIC-based controller
that intercepts the protocol streams between the transceivers and logging
program and translates them into a single protocol. It knows which radio has
the antenna and sends the appropriate tuning commands to the SteppIR
controller. There's a complete description on my website at www.wc1m.com.
Rather than expand on this for the three-stack, I decided to write a
PC-based application to run each of the SteppIR controllers independently
via COM ports. It will be integrated with my logging program (Writelog) and
a PC application that drives a set of Hamation Relay Drivers that switch all
my antennas, filters and stubs. This way, I can click on buttons on the
screen and have the SteppIRs automatically switched and tuned as needed.
I'll post a complete description when I get all that working (at the moment,
I'm focusing on getting the SteppIRs in the air!)
73, Dick WC1M
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rfman45 W2LO [mailto:rfman45@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 7:23 PM
> To: towertalk@contesting.com
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Stacked Steppirs
>
>
> If anyone is using stacked Steppirs, I'd like to know do you have two
> control boxes slaved one to the other when changing bands or do you
> have to
> punch up each one individually? How does this work?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Mike W2LO
>
>
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