Melting more solder … 10×2 Antenna Controller

10x2remote1 10x2remote2

Last year I published a few articles on station automation in FUNKAMATEUR magazine. One of them (FA 5/13) was about a 6×2 antenna controller unit I had developed that allows using a 6×2 antenna switch from two different shacks in parallel and keeping care of interlocking things. Soon after we changed our homebrew 6×2 switch for a commercial 10×2 antenna switch (sorrily no 10×2 homebrew designs available) so I re-developed the 6×2 controller to a 10×2 controller. As I now want to use all the available HF antennas remotely, too, I just put together another dedicated 10×2 controller for the remote station, see pictures. As an addition to my original design (that is used at our contest QTH in the 2 shacks for “normal” operation) I included another small circuitry to this one to also switch the PTT of the remote K3 between HF and VHF so the 2 m-PA will not be keyed when working on HF and vice versa. Furthermore I put the push buttons for antenna selection to the backside as I just need them once (or just whenever something changes) to select the appropriate antenna (selection is stored in PIC’s internal memory) and to make sure it’s not easy for somebody in front of the station to accidentally change it. You know it is difficult to correct such “errors” when being a few hundred kilometers away. 😉 Hope to find some time in the next few weeks to put all this stuff (schematics, PCB design, detailed description, etc.) onto this website, too.

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