>I would strongly recommend against mounting the relays any higher than 5' on
>your tower. After my second lightning strike, I moved all of my relays to
>the bottom of my towers where it is so much easier to work on them. I own
>two Array Solution SixPaks and they work very well for SO2R, to my knowledge
>Ameritron does not offer the two line input. If you are not interested in
>SO2R, than I would just look at the construction of each box as well as the
>customer service and pricing and decide which one is best for you.
>
>John KK9A
SO2R would be *real* nice to have, especially since 15 will probably
start opening up in a year or two, and 10 shortly after that.
I may just wind up not getting anything in this case. The whole idea
was to convert to 1/2" Heliax up the tower (it's a crank-up tower,
not freestanding) to the relay box, then runs of RG-213 to the
various antennas. It's only about 30' of coax from the operating
position to the base of the tower. Right now I have a 4-position
switch on the T-T 238 tuner that seems to do the job (one of the
positions has a 2-position switch after it (80 and 160 antenna). If
the relay box is close to the bottom, I'm still going to have 4 runs
of hardline at #70 feet each, then having to adapt the N-connectors
to PL-259s to directly connect to the antennas.
I figured putting everything up at the top would give me a good deal
financially and performance-wise. At ~$2.50 a foot, that will add up
pretty fast if I'm running 4 lines up the tower...figuring $280 for
feedline, probably another $125 for connectors AND the cost of the
switchbox itself. I think I may be getting into the realm of
diminishing returns by mounting all this at ground-level. Hrmpf.
That's suddenly a LOT of money for an extra dB or so and some
operating convenience.
Cheers,
Peter,
W2IRT
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