Based on the best experiences found on the web, I made my own copy of the CHA-250B antenna. This antenna has many controversial opinions. I decided to do it because having a Hex-beam directional antenna and SDR radio – I needed a multi-band antenna with omnidirectional characteristics. In addition to the characteristics, the most important […]
Category: Designs
How to measure the performance of the HF receiver?
In the comment to “HF5L Radio Club in SSB Fieldday 2018” Marek SP5IXS rightly pointed out that “third order dynamic range” is a key parameter of receiver quality. He also asked good questions: What is the difference between IP3 and “3rd order dynamic range”? What is the relationship between RX sensitivity and “3rd order dynamic […]
Rotator Controller Interface for YAESU G-800DXA, G-1000DXA, G-2800DXA, G-5500
Updated: 2018-08-31. The USB-232B interface allows connection of the YAESU rotator controllers to a PC via the USB port. The interface supports various types of YAESU rotator controllers: G-800DXA, G-1000DXA, G-2800DXA and G-5500. The interface works with many HAM logging programs, for example N1MM, DXLab, HRDRotator, HRDSatTrack, also allowing satellite tracking, using the improved RC5-3 […]
Wireless and automatic antenna switching
Automatic antenna switching – good. Wireless antenna switching – even better. But automatic and wireless antenna switching is just that! As I did for the FT-991, it shows the circuit diagram below. The controller is connected to the TUN/LIN socket and is supplied from it (warning! ABCD signals encoding the band are available on the […]
Power over coaxial cable
If a DC power supply is needed near the antennas, the use of a coaxial cable for this purpose avoids pulling the additional cable to the roof or mast. The diagram below shows the DC power inserter – Power over Coaxial (PoC) solution tested by SP5GNI. Coupling capacitors should allow the transfer of relatively high […]
Wireless antenna switching
Automatic antenna switching is a convenience and safer operation of the equipment, but it does not solve all the nuisances. If the antenna switch is located in the radio room, then a separate fider should be derived from each antenna, which does not have a very favorable effect on costs and aesthetics (not to mention […]
Automatic antenna switching in Yaesu transceivers
Automatic antenna switching is not only convenience, but also safer operation of the equipment. Yeasu transceivers are equipped with a socket on which BCD signals represent the currently selected band. The truth table for the TUN/LIN connector in FT-991 is below: D (pin 7) C (pin 6) B (pin 5) A (pin 4) Dec value […]
More about the rotating antenna by SP5GNI
The article “GNI-r3 rotor antenna rotor controller” describes my simplest structure. The user’s manual is available here. I also mention the extended version – the manual is also available. In fact, I have checked other concepts of rotor control. My first idea was to control the rotor completely wirelessly. Impossible? And yet. After all, the […]
GNI-r3 antenna rotor controller
In issue 3/2018 of the Świat Radio monthly, I published an article about my controller design for popular RAU and RAK antenna rotors. Below is a short version of this publication along with a slightly modified scheme. The GNI-r3 controller supports one rotator. Antenna rotation is possible in the range of 0-360 degrees with reserve […]
Full Colour Morse manipulators from 3D printer
Many colleagues would like to start or play with telegraph again, and a key problem arises. What to do? You can buy an expensive “Bencher” or other company, but I decided to do it on a 3D printer. Something like the pictures came out, of course they all work. A set of such a key […]