External Antenna Control

Feature Requests
1

Can we have a new panel for ‘External Antenna Control’ ?

Physical setup would be something connected to a free COM Port and you can raise/lower the RTS or CTS pin to get a relay to flip and have your signal go to another antenna. simple

This is for 7300 and other radios that only have the one antenna port

Is something like this possible?

Or would you rather integrate something off-the-shelf like the AMERITRON RCS-10 which drives 8 antennas with 3-wire cable and a Binary Coded Decimal system, 000 = antenna #1 -and- 111 = antenna #8. that would mean we would need to come up with a simple interface board for communication (generate the BCD signal)

Or maybe reverse engineer how the control signal is sent to the Green Heron Engineering 8-Channel Antenna Controller. https://www.greenheronengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Select-8_Brochure.pdf
That unit uses 802.15 ZigBee Wireless and requires a USB to ZigBee adapter (which they sell and call it a “GH Everywhere Base Unit”)

2

As tempting as this is, I think these needs would better be served by other tools. We, as a small team, have enough trouble keeping up with the dozen or so prime support radios, three operating systems, ten or so hardware controllers, and so on.

I think it would be nice as a stand-alone open source project though. And if someone wanted to connect it in to wfview for automatic band switching, T/R, preamps/ATT, etc, we could work on that together.

I’m currently looking at building an LDMOS amplifier, and remote control is something I have to consider.

—E
de W6EL

3

im building one too… check my QRZ page.

fired up the just the pallet alone for first time last week. just on the bench, made 800watts and was only giving it 3W.

4

Hehehe awesome. Fun times ahead for sure!

5

My remote IC7100 can select any of 4 ports, band depending using a decoder board like this one: ICOM CI-V Band Decoder (10 outputs) | RA0SMS Shop

The Band Voltage output on the ACC socket is vague to say the least, and needs a hardware mod to work at all. It does not allow for differentiation between 10/12m, 20/17, and is very hit & miss detecting 30m. It’s next to useless.

The above board uses CI-V, and You can combine it with multiple units like this: 6-way DIY Kit 6:1 Coax Remote Antenna Switch SO-239 1.8MHz--60MHz ot16 | eBay to enable any combination depending on what band You select. The board has 2 output rails per band, so You can do the math on the combinations You can make happen. Combine this with a PTT bit, and things get interesting.

Of coarse, this is not configurable by software/remote, but it is a totally solid solution.