Joe,
With amps or VHF/UHF radio I have always wanted to see a weather
proof black box to mount at the antenna and then a control
panel/power supply for the shack.
It's not really convenient to place the whole radio at the antenna,
because then the control cable would be more complicate. The best
combination is to have all RF circuitry at the antenna, and run a low
frequency or zero frequency IF (in analog or digital form) down to the
shack, where the rest of the processing takes place.
Commercial microwave links often are set up in that way. Over a decade
ago I was in charge of planning and installing such a radio link. The
equipment I finally chose was made by Ericsson, and each station
consisted of a dish antenna with a radio unit enclosed in a weathertight
case, directly attached to the dish. A single coax cable ran down to the
indoor equipment. That cable carried the low frequency signals, power,
and control. The indoor unit would do all the rest.
We can homebrew similar setups in ham radio, but manufacturers can very
likely sell larger amounts of complete radios housed in shiny boxes with
as many knobs, buttons, meters and displays as will possibly fit on the
front panel. Instead a gray box with one antenna attachment and one
connector for a data/signal/power cable is much harder to sell.
This is a good source for high performance "black boxes" that are well
suited for mounting in weatherproof boxes at the antenna feedpoints.
There are preamplifiers, power amplifiers, converters and transverters
for several bands. But apparently no complete antenna-mounted radio:
https://shop.kuhne-electronic.de/kuhne/en/
With these components you can use a VHF/UHF multimode radio, and even
make use of its HF support if it has it, mount preamps and power amps
for VHF/UHF at the antennas, and mount transverters plus amplifiers for
all the higher bands at the antennas too. It's not hard to do, but a
highly capable multiband VHF/UHF/microwave station quickly gets expensive!
In the times of Phase 3D, AKA Amsat-Oscar 40, I used an antenna-mounted
13cm to 2m converter from this company, fed into a homebrew 2m to 6m
converter, and feeding that 6m signal into my FT-736R.
When I bought the piece of land where I live now, I intended to set up a
remote HF antenna system, with a legal limit amp and an RX preamp, at
least, located at the tower. This would have been installed at the
summit of a hill located within my property, having a completely free
horizon all around. That summit is 150m away from the house, so it would
have taken a long, buried coax cable carrying RF and basic control
signals, with the AC power being carried by a separate cable. But I got
too old, tired and lazy, before getting to the point of doing it, so it
seems unlikely that I will ever do it. Instead I make do with modest HF
antennas located by the house, on the westward slope of that hill.
Manfred
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http://ludens.cl
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