[GreenKeys] OT: remote transceiver

[Ralph Mowery]

It depends on how far away the stations are you want to contact.  If not very far away, I would just mount the antenna low and not worry about grounding the antenna.  

While I have a good antenna setup, I also have a dual band antenna mounted on the deck outside the that is about 10 feet off the ground and feed it in to the house in the living room to a separate rig.  The antenna is much lower than the roof of the house, so I do not worry about lightning .There is no ground for that antenna.  As I don’t operate very many repeater with it as the main thing is to monitor a 2 meter repeater I keep up.,  I just fed it with about 75 feet of rg-8x.  I probably would go to some low loss coax like Davis Burry Flex.  I just do not like the lmr 400 as the center conductor is copper coated aluminum.  Just my thing as I am sure there will probably be many saying that lmr 400 is ok.

 

Ralph ku4pt

 

 

 

 

From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Gil Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 4:14 PM
To: aaa-greenkeys
Subject: [GreenKeys] OT: remote transceiver

 

Hey folks:

 

Off-topic question for 2m/70cm only (not hf):

 

Let's say I have a great location for a roof antenna, but it's on the opposite side of my house from my lab where I want to operate a transceiver.  What do I do?

 

- run a really long antenna cable -- I'd rather not -- even low-loss LMR-400 would be 100 feet or more across the roof and not a clean run at that.

 

- just put the antenna on the lab side of the house -- yeah, have a spot on that roof section also, but the electrical panel is on the opposite side of the house, and I'd probably want to drive a few ground rods on the lab side and would then need to bury 150 feet or so of 4 awg bond wire to tie to the entrance ground at the panel.  Not a easy run for the bond wire either.

 

- some means to locate the transceiver near the antenna and control it remotely.

 

I can't believe that this is a unique situation just for me.  Yeah, some fancy transceivers allow control over an internet connection, but those seem to mostly be thousands of dollars and/or are hf rigs (I just want 2m/70cm).  I have multiple cat6 cables available between the locations, and solid wifi with three access points, but these products all seem to get pricey.

 

Would be nice to use an ht as an exciter (dial it down to a watt or such, connect to a magic box that loads it, sends a low-level signal over a cat6 cable to a remote amp/antenna.  Likely not available or particularly feasible, but would be handy.

 

What about mobile rigs with separate faceplates (must have mic input on faceplate also)?  I have no experience with them, but the price is reasonable (even adding a dc power supply).  Of course they are designed for 10 or 15 feet separation in a vehicle, but can any of them run further?  Do any brands lend themselves to a hackable interface to drive a long cable?  If it is just mic/speaker analog or digital signals, and some digital control channel, that would be easy enough to wrap with a bit of circuitry at each end.  Don't even care about what the proprietary digital encoding is, as it would just need a cable driver that handles the rate/slew/levels.

 

Anyone have knowledge of any of the mobile rigs with remote faceplates?  Or any other options?

 

thx, gil

 

ps: posting on a couple of lists, in case you get a dupe.

 

 

 

gil smith, AF7EZ
greenkeys moderator
gil at baudot.net

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