Interesting topic... On 4/20/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
For some reason, none of the repeater controller manufacturers seem to have incorporated any "real" rotator direction control functions in their controllers, even though they support various HF transceivers with control of modes, frequencies, bands, filters, scanning, memories, etc.
That's interesting. I did some Googling last night while I was waiting on a customer to finish swapping a board during a maintenance window, and I see that there's a couple of standards for Serial control/reading of rotor controls, and the HyGain protocol seems to be the most popular. Would you agree? I haven't done anything like that yet. Might be worth putting the protocol on the "wish lists" of the controller manufacturers that have serial ports... <snippage...> If they could do it back in the 1980's, it should be able to be done now. An
HF Remote Base isn't very useful on the upper HF bands without a directional antenna, and having it fixed in one direction is usually pointing the wrong direction when you need to use it.
Seems very "do-able" if the controller has a bi-directional serial port, which many are either already "there" or are going to be soon. Usually the serial port is tasked with being the way "in" for the controller to be programmed... but I bet the firmware folks could come up with interesting hybrid approaches to the re-use of the port for rotor control when desired. There's other ways, but the "plug and pray" these days would seem to be the HyGain serial protocol. (However the HyGain rotor control that does the protocol itself gets crappy reviews everywhere... there appear to be better solutions that use HyGain's protocol.) We should see if any of the controller manufacturer's pop up with comments on the list... I can think of some interesting uses for such a setup on an HF or VHF remote base... and with Auxiliary Station control now legal on VHF... Hmm, interesting ... Nate WY0X
