N6KB wrote:
>Please excuse if I have already told you this. If you are going to put
much effort into a receive antenna switching system, I recommend using
pushbutton control verses a rotary switch.
No, I have never used rotary switches for my Beverages. I
currently use a 3 way toggle switch which has the following hard-wired
options:
1. My "go to" EU/NE USA (2 phased 1100' Beverages @ 50 degrees).
2. My "go to" Western USA (single 580' Beverage @ 280 degrees).
3. 7 optionally selectable Beverages at 30/70/95/140/205/240/330.
I can select any of these for position 3 depending on what I am
expecting to hear at any given time (e.g. SA on 140 in the evenings
or JA on 330 in the mornings). Of course in position 3 I can also
select other bearings depending on what I may be expecting to hear.
This simplifies switching since I can quickly switch between
the 3 directions rather than going through a rotary switch with 9
positions. However, this only works for the single RX ANT input
for Main RX, and I would really like to optionally assign different
antennas to the Sub RX for diversity. For example, then I could
listen in the two main directions (1 and 2 above) simultaneously
using diversity.
The real switching issue is to optionally be able to select
any given Beverage (or TX antenna for omni) for either Sub or Main
RX. One solution is an 8X2 matrix which someone has already told
me they are working on. I could then use ANT 1 always for TX
(either high-angle or low-angle), RX ANT for the Main RX, and
ANT 2 for the Sub RX. I could assign any of up to 8 Beverages
to either RX ANT (Main) or ANT 2 (Sub). I also need to work out
a way to use either TX antenna (high-angle or low-angle) as an
additional RX antenna (e.g. TX on the vertical, use Beverages
on RX ANT to the Main RX, and use my inverted-vee TX antenna as
an omni input for the Sub RX via ANT 2.
Life gets complicated with 9 RX directions and 2 TX antennas!
73, Bill W4ZV
P.S. Signing N6KB without the /KH6 really confused CT this weekend.
I had to log you as /KH6 to get it to accept "HI" as your "state".
This was easy to fix afterwards by editing the Cabrillo file but it
definitely caused problems for some guys to figure out.
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