Antenna switch system refurbished

I have been working hard on the switching system the last few days. As mentioned earlier I was tired of how it looked and decided to change the mounting of the power splitters and try to get the control lines more organized. I am very pleased with the result. I used some cable ladders that I had gotten donated by SM3WMU which made it easier to handle the quite large amount of cables.

I’ve just briefly configured one openASC box and that works on all bands except 10m. I think I have some problem in the power splitter for that band, will investigate more tomorrow. I will now be able to use 10, 15, 20 and 40m on all four radios and with addition of 2 more power splitters for 80/160 I will be able to route those bands to all radios as well. Right now they are only on radio 1 and 2.

I’ve been thinking a long time about making it possible to unhook the 2×60 leaded control lines between the driver cards in the basement to the antenna switches located out in the barn. This is to make it pretty much impossible for close by lightning to ruin any of the driver electronics. Because even though I have transient protection I don’t fully trust it to 100% There is no safer way than just disconnecting everything. So I sat down and pealed and soldered a total of 240 leads, which was later installed. So I peeled a total of 480+ cables, a real pain.

Now I will also install some cable terminals that was donated by SG3P which has got the possibility to break the connection between the poles. That will be installed to the rotator cables so that everything to the house is unhooked, except the beverages. But for those I’ve gotten some GDTs to add as protection against surges.

Here are some pictures,

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