The top of the rack is dedicated for telecomm stuff, the telephone line terminates to this rack now for the ADSL modem, as there's no landline phone anymore for other purposes. Before the ADSL line was terminated in the house and only a cable for the remote setup ran to the garage, now the setup is inverted so that the cable running *from* the garage to the house, provides network for the PC and other appliances there.
Next are the antenna relay and rotator controller, a Microbit WebSwitch which allows antenna to be turned from a web client. I'm planning to replace that with a Arduino setup
Bottom of the picture shows the Kenwood TS-480 and Icom IC-706mk2G remote radio setups. Very nice 2U-high rack enclosure for the radio and RemoteRig box!
Of course during the 'renovation' we had a single strike thunderstorm in Pusula, and the lightning hit something few kilometers away when I was in the garage building the setup. I saw an arc somewhere in the cabinet, and later found out that it came through the telephone line and broke another ADSL modem. Luckily enought I've been collecting spare modems, and another came in handy then :) I added a Krone lightning protector bar to the Krone panel where the telephone line terminates and connects to the modem below. I routed the line through two pairs of the protectors just for extra protection :)
I also added lightning protectors to all antenna lines terminating to the roof of the cabinet. It was a really tight fit, the connectors make it barely so that they do not touch to roof all the time!
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| All N, even for HF. That's because I did not have any UHF lightning protector, but N works OK for HF too :) |
The bottom of the rack is dedicated for power supplies and the server computer. All 'critical' AC is fed through the small UPS which takes care that the server won't face short power interrupts. Also the other non-radio power supplies are fed from behind the UPS to protect the power supplies and systems from electricity net based spikes. The server is a Linux server and it's main purpose is to provide web outlook for the weather station on the roof.
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| Server and power supply department of the rack |
During the rack upgrade I decided also to upgrade the firmware of the TS-480 radio. After spending some time figuring out what's wrong, I can with honours tell you all now that the Kenwood upgrade software does not like and even recognize USB serial ports!
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| Kenwood TS-480 upgrade process on the livingroom table |
Both of the radios, Kenwood TS-480 and Icom IC-706mk2G sit nicely in a 2U high open rack box which I found from OH1AD Flea Market 'Lutikoiden Tuuletus' few years back (Yes, they most propably still have those!) The box has a top cover with lots of holes in it, so it works also for the heat transfer.
Only thing I miss in these great cases is a full front face for the box to hide the equipment in to the box, but I've given up finding such as a leftover somewhere. It needs just a one-piece aluminium sheet which I can find from a hardware show for sure
The antenna setup in the Pusula remote setup is pretty simple. For HF currently there's only a 80m loop spread into the woods. Putting a 6:1 Balun on the loop was a good choice as the antenna was 'naturally' tuned to all bands needed :) For 6m and 4m there's a dual band yagi built by Egil LA8AV, and a 15-el antenna for 2m. The vertical on the top of the tower runs to a Icom FM dual bander for repeater talk etc.
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