Jon,
I have one of those up on my tower, too. It's been there about 6 years I
guess. It's worked fine since I put it up, but only because I discovered its
problems when I had it in the shack.
To make a long story short, I found that the relays which looked to be well
soldered to the PC board, were in fact cold-soldered in a few places, enough to
cause noise, and what probably would have ended up as losses over time while on
the tower.
I diligently re-soldered all those connections with a hot-enough soldering gun,
and thereafter haven't seen a recurrence of this problem. I can't tell whether
this could apply to you (don't know exactly what you mean by "replacing
components."), but it certainly was a problem for me. There was nothing I
could (consistently) measure, nor really find by visual inspection, but the
problem was solved and stayed solved by this very simple measure.
Good luck. We'll all be interested to see what the real cause turns out to be.
--
73 es HNY,
Greg, K0GW
Reply to k0gw AT arrl DOT net
-------------- Original message ----------------------
> Message: 8
> Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 03:09:29 -0000
> From: "Jon Casamajor" <k6el@comcast.net>
> Subject: [TowerTalk] Ameritron RCS-4 and noise?
> To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
> Message-ID: <9AF64F31EBC043E6898B27B1B614D2C8@JonPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I have used the Ameritron RCS-4 to switch antennas on my tower for probably
> 19-20 years with zero issues. I recently re-worked my single tower stack and
> while we were doing that, replaced the RCS-4 switch components. My stack is
> on QRZ so I won?t describe it here. In the past few days I have a S9+60dB
> noise level on 40m that is pretty much constant. The noise on my SteppIR,
> 20m tune, starts off about the same but settles down to maybe S2 or less,
> about what I would expect for conditions.
>
> My 2 el 40m Yagi loads up fine and plays with a 1.1:1 SWR at the low end
> which is where it is tuned. I am suspicious that I have a problem with the
> relay box at the top of the tower that is causing the extreme noise. (makes
> 40m completely useless) I?ve swapped out shack consoles for the RCS-4 with a
> spare. If I leave it on the 40m position for an hour or so, it will
> eventually blow the 1A fuse in the console with the +60dB noise level.
>
> I feed the tower with a buried ?? hard line to the tower and low loss LMR400
> up to the switch. I also have VHF and UHF Yagi?s on the stack that are fed
> with separate hard lines and nothing has changed with those feeds.
>
> If anyone has any ideas I would sure appreciate the input. I am suspicious
> that the relay may be hanging up and putting the AC switching voltage back
> onto the feed line somehow.
>
> I?ve had Pacific Gas and Electric, our power provider, out here and he took
> a ?picture? of the noise and agreed it was horrible. They are still looking
> for problems and have found a very noisy pole maybe a mile away. They have
> been great with their response and support in looking for the problem. I?m
> out of ideas! :-(
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Jon-K6EL
>
> k6el@comcast.net
>
> End of TowerTalk Digest, Vol 72, Issue 93
> *****************************************
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