Archive for the ‘ Antennas ’ Category
Today I’ve done some work around the tower. I am going to put up a new section so all the cables had to be cleared from the tower. Really unwieldy cables to wind up! Maybe I’ll take down all the antennas and other stuff in the tower tomorrow. I also have to fix better guy lines as I am now using real guy lines on the first section but only blue rope at the second..
Today I had little time to finish the antenna switch, but I had enough time to drill and mount all the LEDs and switches on the control unit. I bought 12 position switches and put the limit to 7 positions, 6 for the antennas and the last one for remote operation.
Also I soldered the rest of the cables between the relay board and the interlock board. Now the antenna switch box is ready, only the control unit left.
I finally got my hands on all the components needed for my 6×2 antenna switch system. The PCBs are made by SM2WMV (sj2w.se) and are of high quality! The making of the alu. box took more time than I thought just because I was out of screw-nuts for the SO239 antenna connectors so I had to snitch 2 or 3 from other stuff of little importance, the results of the snitching was not so good though..
I did not have time to solder the cables and the remote control box is also at the “to-do list”. My idea was to make 7 options for each radio, switch 6 antennas and the last one is for turning the antenna box remote capable without desoldering all the cables.
The drilling went easy and was done quickly!
Heh.. As I said, the results was not that good.. But I made it!
The complete connector plate
PCB mounted and ready for soldering
The brain in the switching system. Also a design by SM2WMV. Interlock Card that makes it impossible for the 2 radios to use the same antenna.
I hope I got time for the soldering part tomorrow…
I had time over to mount the two yagis in a vertical plane. Tomorrow I will pick up some 75Ω cable to make the stacking cables.
I will go by the following guidlines for matching two 50Ω yagis together (taken from DK7ZB website):
Two cables l1 and l2 with any but same length of 50Ohm coax will give a Z=50Ohm at the connection point. One piece of lambda/4-75Ohm-cables will give the 50Ohm for the feeding.
Today I went by my local electronics store and bought myself a screw set to be used for mounting the N-connectors to the antenna patch. It was a quick job and now it’s alot easier to connect my radios and experiments to the antennas and also to connect every antenna to common earth.
