ALS-600 SS AMP &Flex 6500?

k0eoo

Has anyone in the community interfaced the ALS-600S SS AMP to Flex 6500 using their remote interface, ARI-500?  Their remote interface has a kenwood interface but no PC interface.... 

Bob G W1GLV

i've been running my 6500 with an als-600 using the ptt to key it. band data is not available from the radio, consequently the ari-500 cannot be used.

k0eoo

So you manually band change the amp and use the PTT line to key it up.  Thanks Bob...

Steve Scoggins

Interfacing the Flex 6500/6700 to the ALS-600 or the ALS-1300 using the ARI-500

Your Flex 6500/6700 transceiver can be setup to provide automatic band switch selection of the Ameriton ALS-600 or ALS-1300 using the Ameritron ARI-500 interface.  Unfortunately, Ameritron does not provide a standard cable for the Flex radios.  So you need to build a custom interface cable to connect between your PC printer port and the ARI-500.  This cable will connect the Radio Interface connector on the ARI-500 rear panel to your PC printer port LPTx.

You will also need to install the DDUTIL Version 3 software to send the band data BCD information to the ARI-500 via the printer port LPTx port.  You can download this software via the following website:

http://k5fr.com/ddutilwiki/index.php?title=DDUtil_v3.0

If you own a newer PC without a printer port,  you can install a printer parallel port adapter card.  I recommend using the Rosewill RC-304 PCI dual printer port adapter card.  The Rosewill adapter ports will be setup on non-standard Hex Addresses.  Using device manager you can obtain the printer port address in hex.  Convert the hex address to decimal and then setup the DDUTIL to use the printer port with that address. More details on this setup on the DDUTIL website.

Connect your Ameritron amplifier to the ARI-500 Amp A and B jacks using the two supplied RJ45 to RJ45 computer network patch cables that are supplied with the ARI-500.

The ARI-500 RADIO input connection is a RJ-45 jack with specific connections for each radio brand.

The diagram below shows the pin-out of the RADIO input jack.

ARI-500 Radio Jack Pinout

RJ45-1 Ground

RJ45-2 Key In

RJ45-3 Kenwood RX

RJ45-4 Kenwood TX / Yaesu BCD D

RJ45-5 Yaesu BCD C

RJ45-6 Yaesu BCD B

RJ45-7 Yaesu BCD A / Icom Power

RJ45-8 Icom Band Data

The black RJ45 Radio Interface cable included with the ARI-500 has the following color wires:

Pin 1 - White with Orange stripe

Pin 2 - Orange

Pin 3 - White with Green stripe

Pin 4 - Blue

Pin 5 - White with Blue stripe

Pin 6 - Green

Pin 7 - White with Brown stripe

Pin 8 - Brown

If these colors do not match your cable, please make a new chart of the wire colors vs. pin numbers.

You can use the RJ-45 cable that is included with the ARI-500.  One end has a RJ-45 connector the other end is unterminated.  You need to install a male DB25 connector to plug into the computer printer port.

The connections for the DB25 Male Connector is as detailed below:

DB25-2    Wht/Brn

DB25-3    Grn

DB25-4    Wht/Blu

DB25-5    Blu

DB25-18  Wht/Org

Now you need to make the following connections between the unterminated end of the cable and the male DB25 connector:

DB25 pin 2- to - RJ45 pin 7 - BCD Band Data A

DB25 pin 3- to - RJ45 pin 6 - BCD Band Data B

DB25 pin 4- to - RJ45 pin 5 - BCD Band Data C

DB25 pin 5- to - RJ45 pin 4 - BCD Band Data D

DB25 any pin 18 to 25 - to - RJ45 pin 1 - ground

The ARI-500 Radio Interface cable transfers the band data between the DDUTIL software program and the ARI-500 interface. It does NOT carry the PTT signal. In order to key the amplifier from the Flex 6500/6700, you need to install a RCA to RCA cable between your Flex 6500/6700 radio TX1 connector and the amplifier relay connector.

Note:  The ARI-500 does not support selection of the 17M and 30M bands.  Switching the transceiver to 17M selects 15M on the amplifier and switching to 30M selects 20M on the amplifier.  Ameritron needs to update the ARI-500 firmware to select the correct bands.

Steve Scoggins N9HE 

k0eoo

Hello Steve,

Thank you for the detailed response.  Right after I made this post one of the Flex group mentioned using the parallel port and DDUtil to send out the BCD code....  Funny I didn't think of that because I already use DDUtil and the parallel port to drive my remote antenna switch, so, all I need to do is add a cable over to the ARI-500 and I'm good to go; must be getting old....

Regards, Dennis, k0eoo

Bob G W1GLV

I believe and correct me if I'm wrong but this whole senerio with DDUTIL requires setup of some macros to do the switching. If this is the case then it's not automatic. This setup would be OK if the amplifier was where you could not swith it manually. I've tried your setup and it does not work with my 6500. It worked very well with PSDR on my 5000. Open to comments.

k0eoo

Hi Bob,

DDUtil and its parallel port function works the same with SSDR as it did with PSDR.  I know because I have done them both.

When I change bands on my 6500 DDUtil sends out static level BDC data via the parallel port to my remote antenna switch as it would the ARI-500.