Promoting Diversity (reception) - you and your TS-930/940

[N8YX]

The TS-930 and TS-940 series rigs arguably are the finest HF transceivers which use through-hole, rather than SMT construction that Kenwood ever built.

They'll do almost everything one could ask for...except receive two frequencies at once, a la the '950 or FT-1000D, and at the same time be computer-controllable.

Here's the beginning of a mod series which will rectify that.

First, we're going to need a method by which to share the antenna connection - as the TR7/R7 and TS-820S/R-820 can do. As delivered from Kenwood, the '940 has an RCA connector on its rear panel titled "External Receiver". A switch allows routing the main station antenna to the '940's internal receiver or to an external unit. But not both at once.

Looking at the layout of the rig and its rear panel with the bottom cover off, one finds a 'Remote/Internal' switch and miniature coax leads running to the common and rightmost connections, and a wire running from the RCA jack next to it to the third switch terminal.

To make the External Receiver connection "always active", one needs to unsolder the larger of the two coax cables which connect to the switch and move it to the rightmost switch connection - tied to the other coax cable. The wire to the RCA connector is then tied to the center terminal of the switch. The switch itself can be used to turn the connection to the external receiver "off" if ever desired.

The best approach to feeding both internal and external receivers would be via the inclusion of one of the following Mini-Circuits power splitters, as they would minimize impedance losses caused by connecting both receivers together with no form of matching network:





These offer 30dB isolation between ports and are usable from 0.004 to 60MHz.

I'm going to order one for each of my '940s. When I install one I'll post pics and details.

One person on the TS-930S Yahoo group indicated this was also a viable mod for the '930, so the instructions I've presented above may be adapted as necessary. I'm not sure how its rear panel is laid out.

[N8YX]

Bumping this one back to the top -

I got some more pieces for this project over the last few weeks and spent some time prototyping a rig-control solution. Thoughts were to use a PIC or BASIC Stamp and control both the '940 and the R-5000 in master/slave poll mode...but then a neat little solution in the form of HRD 5.0 came along. If one hooks both rigs to a PC running HRD then uses the "Tuning -> Synchronization" feature, it's possible to designate any number of secondary radios as sub-receivers...and they'll track the 'main' (in-focus) rig with regards to band, mode and frequency.

One of the R-5000s in my shack came with a device called an SWL-Remote. This gadget offers a level converter for RS232 signals and features an IR receiver that can be used with any one of a number of "universal" remote controls. The device uses a common TV protocol and will work with a number of HF general-coverage receivers:



http://www.universal-radio.com/catal...rxvr/1777.html

When HRD is operating in "Synchronization" mode and the R-5000 has focus, its companion TS-940S can also be tuned via the remote...as it tracks the receiver's band/freq/mode data.

Next pieces of the puzzle are as follows:




I got a couple of these from Fleabay w/ DVD burner and floppy...cheap. They have 1.7GHz Celerons installed along with 1.5GB RAM - plans are to install 2.4GHz P4s and 2GB RAM. I/O city...tons of ports...except we need more serial ports and a dual display adapter to run "heads-up".

So...



This card plus its 4x DB-9 fan-out cable gives up a total of 6 serial ports.

And...



Here's a neat video solution for the remaining adapter slot. (You get 1 PCI, 1 AGP in these Shuttle boxes). Each VGA output passes through an HDMI converter and into one of four HDMI inputs on a (planned) 46" Sony LED TV which will be mounted on the wall and serve as a heads-up display for contesting duties. The 6200's DVI output (or one of the built-in USB ports) will be used as the main system video output and each system will be equipped with a wireless keyboard/mouse combo.

Configured fully...each PC attaches to the gear as follows:

COM1 - RS-232 input of DSP599 (this unit can be run as a RTTY/PSK31/SSTV modem by MMTTY and others)
COM2 - control of THL 2.5fx and accessory tuner (pending)
COM3 - control of TS-940S via IF-232C
COM4 - control of R-5000 via SWL-IR
COM5, 6 - control of R-7000 and Pro-2035 scanners/monitors via ScanCAT

The SB-51G is also capable of running in "headless" mode with no monitor, keyboard or mouse attached; one can use Windows' RDP to control it. That's tonight's test. Right after I get the serial card installed and configured...

[KC2UGV]

If you are running *Nix, the serial card will just pop up as /dev/ttyS{x} :) Not sure about your video though...

[N8YX]

If you are running *Nix, the serial card will just pop up as /dev/ttyS{x} :) Not sure about your video though...

Yes, and yes.

One must install the NVidia driver and then reconfigure X - afterwards, adding the "TwinView" option and associated parameters to xorg.conf.

That card works slick. Neat thing is that it's one of the cheapest available.

Checking around, it'll cost me a hole (sic) $10 to upgrade each CPU to a P4/2.4GHz - 533MHz FSB setup and another $50 per box for 2GB RAM.

So...$60 + $100 (for the Siig card) + $40 (for the 6200) allows the old hardware to remain viable for a while longer. It'll support Windows 7, but I'm looking to get hold of a 64-bit Shuttle solution in a couple of years. What I'll eventually do with the existing systems and their XP Pro installs is to image them for backup/restoration purposes once they go EOL then firewall them down so they cannot go anywhere but HRD's and N1MM's update sites..the DX cluster...and a couple other 'trusted' places. If the aforementioned software will be ported to run in Win7-64 I'll just chuck the boxes when the time comes...

[N8YX]

A bit more on the "diversity" angle:

Apparently MMTTY (which I have installed on one of the Shuttles as of this posting) allows you to run a pair of sessions - one per receiver - and logically combine them. That is, If I read the manual correctly. The Hot Tip would be to utilize a separate receiver/antenna combination for each "side", thus eliminating polarity fading (which has been the point of this entire exercise..). More testing is in order. N1MM can also do SO2R, not just SO2V - according to the blog entry below:

http://w9oy-sdr.blogspot.com/2010/01...m-cw-so2r.html

This could prove...interesting.