Topband: Switching Beverages, cont'd.

[Brad Anbro]

​Hello all,

Awhile back there was some discussion about switching Beverages. When I was back in
Illinois, I had three bi-directional Beverages and I assembled my own circuitry for
switching between antennas and directions. Being an industrial electrician, for me the
project was rather straight-forward.

I used an 8" square Carlon® PVC outdoor-type weather-proof junction box and in this
box, I fashioned up a "bottom plate" on which I mounted two "DIN rails" - for holding
the relay sockets, for the 6 "ice cube" relays. I used 120VAC relays and each relay, when
not being energized, grounded each center conductor of the six 75-ohm coax cables
through a  75-ohm, 5-watt Xicon (286-75-RC) resistor.

On the bottom of the enclosure I installed seven RCA-type phono jacks - six for
the 75-ohm coax cables from the Beverage transformers and the last one
being the "output" of the relay that was being selected.

I made up a control box, using a 2-deck rotary switch; one deck being for the
120VAC that energized the ice cube relays and the other deck being used to
power low-voltage indicator lights that gave a visual indication of which of the
Beverages had been selected. I used a 120VAC step-dowm transformer and a
resistor of the proper size, to supply the proper voltage for the indicator lights.

That was how I did it. A BIG thanks to Gary, KD9SV, for all of the helpful
hints and low-band education that he has supplied me with...

73 de Brad, N9EN
Bluff City, Tennessee
"in the hills"...