[CQ-Contest] Multiple direction antennas on one radio...why?

[e73m at e73m.com]

I inserted my remarks in your text below...

On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:30:48 -0400, Tom W8JI wrote:
> This has my curiousity.....does anyone know what stations doing this 
> really
> do?
>
> When I have a splitter, power divides from the exciter. Each amp has 
> fixed
> gain. If I have one 10 dB gain amp and a 100 watt exciter I have 1000 
> watts.
> If I split the power into two 10 dB amplifiers, I have 500 watts per 
> amp
> minus splitter losses. If I split it four ways, I have less than 250 
> watts
> per amp. It doesn't matter if I split before the amps or after, 
> except for
> the size of the splitter.
>
> I would either have to have a variable gain amplifier driving the 
> splitter
> that would increase power into the splitter just over 3 dB  for each 
> two-way
> split, or I'd have to have dummy loads and replace amplifiers with 
> dummy
> loads as I pulled antennas out of line.
>
> How do they do it?

Single band two amps with two 1/4 wl RG59.
Multiband for two amps, they use something like magic-t spltiter from 
your website and available here 
http://www.wolfgang-wippermann.de/split505050.htm and one more place but 
I do not remember the link.

Three OM3500 need about 130-150w for 9kw total output and FT1000MP/MKV 
and FT5000 are perfect.

Acom also has new splitter/combiner for three amps 
http://www.cqdx.ru/blog/2011/06/28/new-acom-3x2000a-qro-splittercombiner-amplifiers/

So far I know only of PP5JR/ZX5J using four amplifiers.

>
> On receiving, summing receive signals from four antennas in different
> directions would hurt MDS, because at minimum every additional pair 
> of
> antennas would decrease receiver S/N by at least 3 dB. There would be 
> at
> least 6 dB of S/N loss and probably more in most cases.
>
> Why would someone do that?
>
> Or do they really use four radios with four amplifiers and four 
> antennas,
> and transmit on all and only listen on one???


I guess some are listening two or three directions in the same time but 
could chose to listen only one and occasionaly checks other directions.
I have heard one top gun built the box with sequencer where you can 
listen main direction for a few seconds and then rotates trough other 
directions to check for callers.

>
> Does anyone actually know how these systems really work, because it 
> seems
> pretty strange to me on the surface. Are these systems planned, or is 
> a case
> of just throwing something at the wall and hoping more sticks to the 
> wall
> than falls off?
>
> One way it would work well is with four listening operators on four 
> separate
> receivers so there is no S/N loss, and one transmitter at a time 
> driving all
> four amps through one additional amplifier so there is minimal phase
> distortion if someone hears more than one TX antenna at once.

I know of one station using two radios and operators to listen two 
directions on same frequency.
>
> I'm just trying to learn something useful here. I would never think 
> of
> running four antennas in different directions into one radio for 
> receiving
> except as a last possible resort.
>
> 73 Tom
>
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