[NLRS] FlexWire interface for the Flex-1500

[John Toscano]

Several years ago, I bought the K3TUF kit for interfacing a Flex-1500 via
its FlexWire interface to external relays for my transverters. I never got
around to using it. I'm not ready to heat up the soldering iron yet, but
while enduring this intolerable delay in getting the concrete foundation
poured for my tower, I am trying to use the down time to "get all my ducks
in a row" with respect to everything else I need to prepare for my
re-incarnated station (move from Minnesota to Texas).

I understand that the interface board provides 16 open collector outputs
and how to connect relays to such outputs, but I don't understand what
value is entered where on the transverter page of PowerSDR to select which
relay(s). My configuration is going to be complex, because I am planning to
eventually use the Flex-1500 on at least 6 bands, 902 through 10368, and
possibly 10 bands if I choose to also use it for 50/144/222/432. There is
not going to be a simple 1:1 correspondence between a band and a single
relay. For example, if I run 2 meters on the Flex-1500, I will select the 2
meter transverter plus the 2 meter power amplifier, but if I select the
1296 band, I will need to connect the Flex to the enabled 2 meter
transverter, but instead of going to a 2 meter power amplifier, the 2 meter
transverter will connect to an enabled 1296 transverter instead. If I
include the 4 lower bands also, it gets even more complicated because the
Flex-1500 would either be talking to a single transverter on one of the low
bands or to the 2 meter transverter and then the higher band transverter. I
suspect it's something simple, just not written down in the documentation
of the K3TUF board nor in the user manual for PowerSDR. Is the "UCB
Address" on the transverter page simply a bitmapped value with ones in each
position where a relay is to be activated? Or is it not possible for one
transverter selection to activate multiple relays at the same time? (While
annoying, that wouldn't be terrible, I'd just have to use one low-power DC
relay's contacts to activate as many coaxial RF relays as necessary for a
particular band...)

Thanks in advance
John Toscano, WØJT/5
ELØ9vu