[Elecraft] Advice needed: Remote Station Enhancement

[Mark Goldberg]

Are you sure the KPA1500 will not be able to tune your antennas? It
includes a tuner, and I would expect it to be capable.

I have been using Arduinos to control things, as they have lots of I/O and
appear to the computer as a USB serial port. Those serial ports can be
remoted via software, although I have not done it. I write simple software
that takes commands over the USB serial port and replies with a response.
See an example at

https://sites.google.com/site/spectrumlabtesting/home/usb-controlled-rf-switch

Maybe you can modify it to control something else. There are Arduinos with
multiple serial ports and lots more I/O that may be useful too. If you have
not tried it, programming an Arduino is not that hard and there are plenty
of examples out there to do almost anything you can think of.

I can't help much with the other stuff, as I have a KPA500 but none of the
other stuff you listed.

73,

Mark
W7MLG

On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 2:50 PM, Dennis Ashworth <dennisashworth49 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I’ve been remoting my K3, KPA500, KAT500 station via the RemoteRig boxes
> and K3/0 mini for two years with solid results. Later this year, I want to
> make several enhancements, including the replacement of the KPA500 and
> KAT500 with a KPA1500. The amp/tuner should be a fairly straightforward
> hardware replacement, but it does necessitate a few station changes which
> I’m not certain how to implement. Let me explain and hopefully the masses
> have ideas/approaches for consideration.
>
> 1. I feed a HyTower vertical (optimized for 40M & 80M) on all bands. Where
> the driving impedance is close to 50 ohms on 40M & 80 (my bands of
> interest) there has been no attempt to match the HyTower on other bands.
> With the KAT500, matching was not a problem and I reduced mismatch losses
> on the feed line by using hardline from the in-shack tuner to the antenna.
>
> When I switch to the KPA1500, operation on the unmatched bands might prove
> problematic. To address this, I plan to provide switchable matching
> networks to transform the HyTower drive impedance on each band to something
> the KPA1500 can match. I can design the required impedance transformation
> networks, but not sure how to automatically select the various (relay
> based) impedance networks required for each band. Clearly, I need to grab
> band data from the K3, but what’s the best hardware to use for this task?
>
> BTW, I want to power the KPA1500 ON with the K3, which requires a Y-cable
> modification, or perhaps one of the N6TV boxes?
>
> 2. I want to interface a K9AY RX antenna 4 position switch to some sort of
> UI that I can access remotely. I can design an electrical interface to the
> K9AY switch, but controlling and monitoring remotely is the issue. Ideas?
>
> 3. I have a Windows computer available at each end of the radio circuit.
> The only other hardware is a SignalLink used for digital mods.
>
> 4. Configuring the station for future antenna enhancements (e.g. SteppIR
> if we live long enough to see sunspots return!) are great if they come
> without significant reliability impacts.
>
> Any ideas how to accomplish the required switching/monitoring?
>
> Thanks
> Dennis, K7FL
> Currently in Panama City, Florida
> Station in Battle Ground, WA
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to marklgoldberg at gmail.com