[TowerTalk] VBI-360s "Beam Direction Indicator"

[Jim Lux]

At 07:28 AM 12/27/2005, larryjspammenot at teleport.com wrote:
>I think it was in NCJ that they used to advertise those wall-mounted Beam 
>Direction Indicator units, and I believe I saw them being sold at Dayton 
>some years ago. I wanted to get one for my new QTH, but like so many 
>ham-related businesses, they appeared to be one of those places that 
>quickly "came and went". They seemed to be no longer listed in any 
>magazines, and I never could get any response to letters, etc. when I 
>tried to inquire about buying one.
>
>It's businesses like that which make me afraid to buy anything out of the 
>magazines or at hamfests, except from some of the big-name manufacturers. 
>Lots of little businesses touting their whiz-bang products, then they 
>disappear shortly after you've paid for the unit.
>
>I'd still like to have one of those units centered on my QTH!

And how much did these beasties cost?

Today, you might be able to cobble up a functional equivalent (that might 
even be more clever and useful) by using an old laptop computer with an LCD 
display.  Brand new 17" LCD displays are down in the few hundred dollar 
range, and a low end fanless motherboard & PS is <$100.  You could make the 
killer GeoChron/Antenna indicator/propagation forecast /DX 
cluster  display.  Or, if you've got bux to burn you could buy an 
inexpensive plasma screen display or a video projector.  Why not have a 
wall sized pan-display?  You could sit in your comfy chair looking at your 
videowall.

The key is to NOT try and make it a PC that does other things.  It happens 
to be a PC, but it's purpose dedicated, so it can be real low end (not like 
updating the gray line is a hard core realtime tracking task)