[WARC] Rotator for the Witoka HF Station

[Mike Foerster]

The W0NE club's remote station up at Witoka now allows everyone to have 
control of the beam direction that we have on the IC-7300.

Now it a great time to go hunting DX on the upper bands because the 
propagation has been great, even on 10 meters.   If you have a 
*Technician class license*, you are allowed to operate from 28.300 to 
28.500 MHz.

Also, please keep in mind that the beam only works on*20m, 15m and 
10m*.  The beam is automatically connected to the radio when you operate 
on one of these 3 bands.  All of the other bands use the Off Center Fed 
Dipole through an external Tuner.

At the last executive meeting, the board voted to purchase a USB 
Interface for the club's Yaesu G800SA rotator.  I ordered the "ERC" kit 
from Vibroplex.com, which arrived Saturday. I managed to get the kit 
assembled and the board installed inside the rotator control box.  Dan, 
WK0W went with me to install the system and get it calibrated.  It took 
a couple trips up there due to some unforeseen problems.

I have updated (hopefully) all of the club members that were registered 
on the Witoka HF radio, the IC-7300 to allow access permissions to 
the rotor when you log in.  If you find that you don't have access to 
the rotor controller shown below, please let me know.

To find the rotor control on the RemoteHams (rcforb.exe) Client 
application on your PC, check on the right side of the application, 
possibly at the bottom right and find "YEASU" (reference the image 
below).  You can either click on the rotor position around the dial that 
you want, or enter the bearing at the top and press the "GO" button to 
change the rotor position.


*There are a number of things that you should be aware of:*
1. You can change the rotor position, but there is a waiting period 
before it will move again.  Watch for the "Moving" indication.  Also, 
you will see the Green indicator on the dial move.

2. Also, the Yaesu rotor can turn more than 360 degrees.  If you attempt 
to turn from 270 degrees (west) to 90 degrees (east), depending on the 
previous direction, the rotor could turn either clockwise or 
counterclockwise.

3. The Mosley Classic 33 tri-band beam that we have has about 6 db of 
gain over a dipole.  This means that when transmitting with 100 watts 
out of the radio, you will have approximately 400 watts of effective 
radiated power in the one general direction.

4. The radiation pattern of a tri-band beam is somewhat broad, probably 
about 45 degrees or so.  You only need to turn the beam in the general 
direction of where you want to be pointing.
*Beam Pattern * *QRZ.com Detail Page*
5. If you hear a station that you want to work, you can get the bearing 
from your station to theirs by looking at the QRZ.com and checking on 
the "Detail" tab to find the "Bearing" that you should use to point the 
beam.  It's interesting to note that the beam heading to a station, and 
his return heading does not equal 360 degrees.  This is because the 
earth is fatter at the equator due to the earths rotation.

6. Remember, the beam only works on *20, 15 and 10 meters*.

7. Remember to press the "TUNE" button after you change bands, or if you 
change frequency a fair amount.

For all club members that don't currently have access to the HF station 
at Witoka, if you want access, please contact me (off the email reflector).

Mike, W0IH
w0ih at arrl.net


*Technical: *(If you are interested)
The interface for the rotator is an ERC-USB (Easy Rotor Controller) is 
designed around a microprocessor that is very similar to what is used in 
an Arduino.  There are several relays on the circuit board that allow 
this board to be used with nearly any rotor controller.  It's quite 
universal.

The interface board came as a kit, which I put together in about 2 
hours.  I spent a lot more time getting it mounted inside our Yaesu 
controller box, however.  The relays basically connect up to the two 
buttons that the user normally presses. The rheostat output voltage 
output from the rotor is monitored to read the position of the rotator.

I also created a simple circuit that will power the rotor controller on 
ONLY when the radio is powered up.  There is a 12v output on the back of 
the ICOM IC-7300 that is used for a tuner (which we are using) and I 
tapped off of that output to drive a triac (solid state AC switch).  
This way the controller is only turned on when the radio is power up.
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