Jeff, K8ND and I have been running and winning single band 160 Meter contests remotely from Signal Point the last two seasons. The Stew Perry contest is a favorite because multipliers are based on distance and Curacao is a long way from even the United States. There is no east coast advantage!
One limitation we had was that we could only select one of our two Beverage receive antennas and then live with it for the whole contest. I’ve been pondering a KISS solution that wouldn’t affect our normal station operations. Finally I hit upon an answer.
The K3 does have a TTL logic signal called DIGOUT1 on the ACC socket that can toggled over the remote with a front panel button press at the operator’s end. I build a small interface box that uses a small relay driver board to switch a SPDT relay between the Europe and USA/JA Beverages based on the state of the DIGOUT1 logic.
The trick is to normally select one Beverage (EU for this discussion) at operating position #3 and temporarily run a jumper cable over to the new switching box. The other Beverage (USA/JA) antenna is selected at operating position #4, where the remote rig is, and a connect it to the box also. The box is then connected to the RX input of the remoted K3.
The K3’s button “PF2” is programmed to toggle DIGOUT1 and away you go! After a remote 160M contest operating session the control operator on site simply removes the box and cables and stores them away, reverting positions 3 and 4 back to normal.
I’ve added a section to our remote operating manual that covers the set up and operation in greater detail. This is just another trick easily done by a K3 transceiver, but alas that depletes our available I/O lines.
Gene Shea, KB7Q
One reply on “Your Beverage Sir”
Thank you, Sir!