Having battled with cabling for about two weeks , I finally got the remote rig (RRC) set up working via a local network switch for SSB and CAT control. I got a spare hour this week that enabled me to carry the gear up to my loft operating position and install the radio there. The good news is that everything that worked downstairs still worked over my LAN and I am able to tune around 2m and 70cm from the comfort of anywhere in my house.
There remains a couple of problems. Firstly, I only have a cheap rotator on the chimney at the moment that has no facility for computer control. This means I have to have a control box downstairs. I thought about this at the start of the project and routed a cable down the chimney into the (unused) Kitchen fireplace directly below which I need to splice into my existing rotator cable. In effect this will limit my operating to one room, but the temperature is stable and I will be able to pop in to see what is happening on the bands without any bother. The second problem is that I still don’t have any CW facility. The remote rig boxes in theory support paddle sent CW, but I am not a regular paddle user but I thought I should give it a go and I dusted my paddle off and plugged it into the control box, the problem was that nothing came out of the other side. Plugging the paddle into the radio pushed it into key down transmit. It looks like I have a problem with the paddle, and possibly with the RRC CW cables as well. What is there to go wrong with a paddle? I can’t take too long to fix. The manufacturer says that the RRC V1 boxes need a mod to handle straight key or computer generated CW. I am especially interested in the latter for contesting, so I will need to find an optocoupler and crack out the soldering iron again. It’s getting closer to completion though!
Update – just had a look at the paddle and realised that the cable needed changing. 10 mins with the soldering iron and a few parts and it was working FB – as is paddle sent CW over the RRC!
There remains a couple of problems. Firstly, I only have a cheap rotator on the chimney at the moment that has no facility for computer control. This means I have to have a control box downstairs. I thought about this at the start of the project and routed a cable down the chimney into the (unused) Kitchen fireplace directly below which I need to splice into my existing rotator cable. In effect this will limit my operating to one room, but the temperature is stable and I will be able to pop in to see what is happening on the bands without any bother. The second problem is that I still don’t have any CW facility. The remote rig boxes in theory support paddle sent CW, but I am not a regular paddle user but I thought I should give it a go and I dusted my paddle off and plugged it into the control box, the problem was that nothing came out of the other side. Plugging the paddle into the radio pushed it into key down transmit. It looks like I have a problem with the paddle, and possibly with the RRC CW cables as well. What is there to go wrong with a paddle? I can’t take too long to fix. The manufacturer says that the RRC V1 boxes need a mod to handle straight key or computer generated CW. I am especially interested in the latter for contesting, so I will need to find an optocoupler and crack out the soldering iron again. It’s getting closer to completion though!
Update – just had a look at the paddle and realised that the cable needed changing. 10 mins with the soldering iron and a few parts and it was working FB – as is paddle sent CW over the RRC!