Control cables

 

Control cables, every amateur will come into contact with them sooner or later ....
on my old qth I had 1 and that was for the rotor for the rest I didn't need one, in the meantime times have changed new qth which brings new challenges.

Now that I have been living here for 4 years  it was also time I started working on all my control cables.
First I had one for the rotor and the antenna switch, then the 40m 4sq was added, then a 20m 4sq that has already been demolished, and now control for the 80m system, and later there will be the control for my future 160m system. ...

All those cables .....

 

 

 

 

This photo is from the shack, as you can see my control cables have a separate entrance to the shack.
I try to label everything because now I still know everything but maybe within a year I forgot everything.

 

You can't see it in this picture but just outside the shack there is a choke on each control cable to try and stop noise entering the shack.

I have always tried to match the colors with the connection inside, In the beginning this still works, but sometimes breaking something off, then something new again until you actually come to the conclusion that the colors are no longer correct.

In order not to make that problem bigger than it is I made a schematic as you can see above.
The schematic here is the one of the shack and the cables running from my barn to the shack

 

 

 

 

This photo is from the barn, everything choked again. Again everything is labeled here too and there is also a schematic of the connections here. Why choked twice because my shack is a small 35m from the shed and you would have to choke every 30m to get a good suppression.

It is not visible in the photo but at the top of the panel is an explanation on paper of how everything is connected to each other.

As you can see, I will have to take another look to add some more control cables. At the moment I still have 6 free which is just enough for my 160m project.
After that my first job will be laying extra control cables from the shack to the barn.
There is also another option and that is to install a software control system ... maybe one day but I love the old fashioned way, Everything may fail here I can continue to operate everything, have no software problems but it is a costly thing all that cabling.

1 big tip
LABEL your cables as carefully as you can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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