[TowerTalk] Antenna Switching - Complexity for its own sake?

[Pete Smith]

Actually, I have a feeling this may have been a prototype for a commercial project -- how else to explain having interfaces for all the common interface hardware standards?  At least this one isn't touting a kit of parts, or a PC board for sale.

I'm just remembering the decision a few years ago to cut 'way down on contest coverage because they didn't have space!

73, Pete N4ZR


At 10:49 AM 9/17/2005, Jim Lux wrote:
>At 05:00 AM 9/17/2005, Pete Smith wrote:
>>The latest QST includes a lead tech article on an automatic antenna switch controller that uses a PIC and a lot of other parts on an expensive PC board to switch 5 antennas either manually or in response to band data from various transceivers.  I must be missing something, because this seems like a LOT of trouble for less capability than could be gotten from a $20 W9XT band decoder card and a few added components.  I know that there are some radios that don't provide BCD band data, but that problem is usually dealt with by running a computer program that provides the band data on an LPT port.
>>
>>For this they burn 8 pages?
>
>
>More likely, someone had a PIC development kit and wanted to develop something. Many a senior engineering project has been born of such circumstances.  Or, they needed a controller, had a PIC eval kit, etc.  There have been a lot of things I've built over the years that were needlessly complex, because I happened to have one of the pieces sitting around (the danger of going to hamfests or surplus stores...).
>
>Clearly, QST isn't oriented towards publishing construction articles of good quality commercial style design.  I'll bet that if you ARE a decent commercial designer, you're busy building your product, not writing articles to submit to QST.
>
>Frankly, I don't envy the QST editors. I'll bet they don't get a huge number of even vaguely suitable articles submitted in a form close to publishable. Look at all the partially completed web pages out there on various projects (including my own).  It's a huge amount of work to get it all done.  Short of ARRL funding some professional writers (not on ARRL's budget!) to work with folks who have done the project, it's not likely to change. And keeping a monthly magazine going is a chore.. it's a beast that must be fed. As soon as issue N is put to bed, issue N+1 is staring you in the face.