Hi Robert, great idea, although I doubt that may servers will be able to use it...
Generally speaking, I think a server needs to hear 360 degrees, but I also see
the advantage of pointing the antenna to a discrete direction when you want
to serve a station e.g. sailing in the south atlantic.
I would try to make a switchable antenna; I have developed one for contesting
which switches 3 directions with 120 degrees sectors...
The main advantage of a directional antenna is to silence QRM from certain directions.
Disadvantage of a rotating antenna is the time necessary for pointing it into the right direction.
Anyway, I like your idea, and I can easily implement it into the client and server.
What do others think of this?
Rein PA0R
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Hi I wrote a subroutine in Perl to turn antenna towards calling client. My 20 meters antenna is down and I am fixing it. I also purchased kit to adapt my A3S to 30 meters, so it will be directional in both bands that is why I started working on this idea. I used Basic Stamp 2 with compass module - that is a part that is installed on mast, everything is connected to my server's computer, I hacked my Yeasu rotator G-800S, used UK1104 - 4-Port USB Relay Controller to control rotator and wrote software, which I attached to this email. Anybody interested in copying this please feel free, any help needed, just send me an email.
Now, subroutine receive position in Lat Lon form , and does turn antenna towards client. I need help with implementing this into the server. Which way will be the best to do it ?
The way
I see this: 1/ Station trying to connect to the server should send a message to server with call sign of the server, client's callsign as well as client's position, 2/ Server after receiving that position send a confirmation and start antennaTurning subroutine, 3/ After server finished turning antenna send another message that turning is completed and is ready to connect . 4/ Now client can connect into the server
I think that initial message from client should look something like this:
<SOH>00uKB2PNM>>SQ2ZAC 37N,44E ABCD<EOT> It should be transmitted in some rebust mode, and answer from server needs to be in similar mode.
It would be great to have a function implemented into client software utilizing this function, however I understand that not too many servers will have that ability. I used already the function that I created in my experimental server
~TURNANT, but client have to connect first to be able to do this.
Please let me know what you think about that idea. As I mentioned, my antenna is down (A3S, server is running on 30 meters only now), I will try to fix it this week end, the only thing that can stop me from doing that can be a need to order some extra parts, that will delay the process for at least a week.
73 Robert KB2PNM
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