I am not sure why people use coax for rotators, it is not necessary with
Green Heron controllers. I had multiple 450 foot rotator cable runs with
prop pitch rotators and Green Heron controllers and I used two conductor
cables with 18AWG wire in a PVC jacket for the reed switches. You can also
buy shielded two conductor cable if you want to be extra safe. Pulse type
sensors are very sensitive to leakage and I have had a few issues with
lightning damaged protectors but other than that this system was very
reliable for almost two decades.
John KK9A
Paul N1BUG wrote:
I have an Orion OR2800DC and Green Heron RT21 both 3 years old. I have
had pulse counting errors almost from the start. I know the cable is not
in good condition as the resistance between conductors is only a few K
ohms and is not consistent day to day. It used to simply miss counts and
have to be recalibrated frequently. Slowing max rotation speed to 4
helped a lot. Yesterday it started randomly seeing pulses when the
rotator is not moving. This has quickly worsened to the point of being
unusable. With the pulse counting wire removed from the RT21 it does not
see any false pulses, so I think the controller is OK.
Assuming it is just worsening cable problems and not a rotator fault, I
am hoping for a quick temporary fix using what I have on hand for cable.
Can I use a run of coax for the pulse counting conductors? What effect,
if any, would that have on the pulse train with a 350 foot run? I could
use two runs of coax but I guess there would be no advantage since one
of the pulse conductors is ground.
Thanks for any help or suggestions.
73,
Paul N1BUG
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