[Milsurplus] coax relays

[Rob Flory]

Hi Gene,
I have a 20-year history of using the old school Dow-Key coax relays with
UHF connectors.  The last installation, which I used up until Sandy
destroyed my antenna farm, used 2 relays in conjunction with a choke,
coupling capacitor,  and diodes, so that I could run plus or minus 24V on
the coax to switch the 3 antennas(third antenna selected with zero volts
DC).  At some time my buddies and I had discovered that the 110VAC relays
switched effectively with 24VDC.  This setup avoided the need for an
additional, very long, control cable.  As was pointed out elsewhere, this
was satisfactory for antennas pretty close to resonance so SWR was low.  If
you are tuning high impedance antennas you may as well go to big open
frames instead of coax.
RF