I have 3 lines running out to my tower for TV reception and scanning. I have a discone for general scanning, Boni whip for HF and a basic TV antenna. Looking at remote antenna switches to possibly add another antenna without running another line out to the tower. Question, When the specs say they work up to 30, 60, or 150 MHz, would that apply to reception only? I was looking at the MFJ products using an existing coax to the tower for control of the switch AND the signal. MFJ-4712, 4713
Remote antenna switch for receive only
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Ubbe
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It's TX related as the SWR goes worse higher up in frequency. The lower the transmit power the lower SWR power that the unit eats up and blow out its components. It could be other capacitors or coils that also restricts higher frequency bands.
Doesn't the J in MFJ stand for junk? Read the eham.net reviews and you will probably start looking for other switches.
You could use $5 CATV switch that are used to switch between a horisontal and vertical type av LNB sat dish head. When applying 18volt DC it will switch outputs. You will need to stop the 18v DC voltage from the output from reaching the antenna. Use a $10 bias-T adapter to feed the voltage to the coax and then a power supply that can go up to 18volts.
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/Ubbe
I can see that. Also need a momentary contact switch on the output of the DC power supply, correct? Same setup work for a 4 to 1 switch? Any way to indicate which antenna is selected?
In my goody box, I have several antenna switches intended for satellite antennas.
Remote control with DiSeqc. Those are good above 45 Mhz and can easily switch your discone, TV antennas etc. Building an encoder is easy and can ride along with bias T with amps.
As for switching TV to discone, consider the discone was originally designed with TV in mind and work great on TVs. Just a splitter is all that is needed. an amp is also a good idea.
My amp is a Scientific Atlanta drop amp (750515C) 15Db gain, $5 on ebay. the switches are cheap pending the number of ports. Use a good grade RG6 coax and good to go.
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Remote control with DiSeqc. Those are good above 45 Mhz and can easily switch your discone, TV antennas etc. Building an encoder is easy and can ride along with bias T with amps.
As for switching TV to discone, consider the discone was originally designed with TV in mind and work great on TVs. Just a splitter is all that is needed. an amp is also a good idea.
My amp is a Scientific Atlanta drop amp (750515C) 15Db gain, $5 on ebay. the switches are cheap pending the number of ports. Use a good grade RG6 coax and good to go.
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Ubbe
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You'll need a constant 18v to have it permanently on output 2. As soon as you want more than 2 outputs you will have to go to DiSeqC switches that can handle at least 4 outputs.
I got a DiSeqC transmitter for $10 from a sale at a sat shop but you can use an old sat box, that has no HD capability, probably for free and set channel 1 to output 1 and channel 2 to output 2 and so on. I have a Dreambox500 that only has SD channels and are totally useless to me. I guess lots of people have old boxes they cannot use any longer. You can then also use a standard $10 sat amplifier between the switch and coax and then a splitter at the sat box (with one terminal non power pass), or connect directly to a sat box's out antenna, to get the antenna signal to one or several scanners/receivers, but probably also needs some sort of attenuation to reduce the signal level to what the scanner can handle.
You will get a better splitter than Stridsberg for less than $50 that also will include the antenna switch and all sat stuff works up to 2000MHz.
/Ubbe
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