Cross banding

Nick - W2NER

It would be great to have the option to do cross banding.  I think it would be a great option to add.

Dale KB5VE

When you say cross banding, what do you mean?

are you talking about using 10 meter to access 20 meters much like the dualband radios do? if it could be done you would need a 6700 with two scu

Nick - W2NER

Yes, that option is available on many radios and it would be a nice feature to have.

KY6LA_Howard

That option already exists on the 6700

and it should be possible to do virtually the same with the 6300 & 6500 albeit you are limited in the bandwidth spread

Nick - W2NER

If this is possible on a 6500 I would like to know how.

Dale KB5VE

yes on vhf and uhf that is 300MHZ apart  on hf you would have issues with desense. 30 MHz is not enough to prevent this. if you want to do this you need to get a ts 2000 and a tmd710 dual band using SKY COMMAND it works great.

KY6LA_Howard

Set Slice A to 20M
Set Slice B to say 15M

I believe you are limited to 14MHz Bandwidth

Nick - W2NER

I had a TS-2000 before getting my flex.  The cross banding worked great on that radio.  That Kenwood is far less expensive then a Flex and the entire 6000 series should do this.  Just my opinion.  I want to be able to do this from VHF to HF

Dale KB5VE

I do not see how you can access the 6300,6500 with a nother radio like a ten meter HT and transmit on lets say 20 meters rebrodcasting what you transmitted on ten meters, that is true cross banding abd sky command on a ts 2000 is the only way I know to do it with radios without adapting other radios to it.  Now you can transmit in 20 meters and receive on 40 meters, the person you are talking to would receive on 20 meters and transmit on 40 meters. . I believe you are not suspose to do that but not sure. I do not believe the 6700 witl do trues cross bandyou would have to link both scu and you might can d that with dax? still would have the same issues you have at fieldday with interference.  I still say get a TS 2000 and the HT or mobil that is sky command compatable I had both and could set by the pool and work skeds on all the bands with my HT.

Dale KB5VE

but that is not cross banding in the way the uhf and vhf radios do it you are not accsessing the flex with a second radio to talk on another band, that is the way cross banding works.

KY6LA_Howard

I likely misunderstood what you meant by crossbanding

OTOH... I already sit by the pool with my iPad (from 18 different countries so far) as well as in Taxi's Hotel Rooms and other place and work DX and skeds via my 6700.  No need to schlep an HT when I already carry an iPad anyways...

In fact, the intent of V2 WAN will be to totally eliminate the need for that HT with a Native Remote Capability...

Nick - W2NER

That's true Elmer.  Sometime in the life cycle of SDR they are going to give us the ability to use the WAN for control using a client from flex (I believe). So that will negate the need for my reason for cross banding.  

KY6LA_Howard

Your quite correct --- except for me, limiting myself to the limited range of a VHF or UHF connection seems so yesterday...when I can now easily control my radio from anywhere in the world using my iPad and the Internet.

I suspect that the need and desire for cross band will likely disappear once V2 WAN is released

Steve N4LQ

Last weekend I heard K6KPH, the KPH shore station, calling CQ on 40 meters but QSX on 80 meters so I opened up a slice on my 6300, set it to transmit on 80m while I listened to him on 40m. We exchanged a short QSO with I always considered "Cross Band". If that isn't cross band then what is it?

Dale KB5VE

I totaly agree with you. The milatary has done that for years. But in the ham world the cross banding term has stuck with cross band repeat with uhf and VHF dualband radios . As for what you are using as an example I was a general and my best friend was a tech. I would get on 75 meters and talk he would get on a two meter repeater that I could gear but not get into it. We would talk that way, it blew many people away that I was talking but no one could hear who I was talking to. So if he wNts that type of "cross banding" I did that in 1979 with my yasu twins and you can do it with almost any modern radio with two vfo positions, the real issue is using one antenna which will work both bands or like all radios with two antenna connection the transmit band on one antenna and recieve on another. But the 6300, 6500 will not cross band repeat.

Steve N4LQ

Ok then I don't understand what the original question was. Cross band repeat? Don't you need a "repeater" for that? Is he wanting to turn a Flex-6000 into a HF cross band repeater? That sounds like a good way to **** out the receiver front end! 

Dale KB5VE

Boy you are so right I started remote ing when the second generation of flex the 5000 came out used team viewer and Skype on my I pad, wow worked great. I have run 75 meter mobil since 1979 all kinds of antennas and up to legal limit and had a ball but when I went to dayton 3 years ago I rented a van for the groupe and as I pulled away from my siverado with the 10/160 screwdriver ant. Icom 706 and 1500 watt solid state amplified I was amassed that I made the trip up and back with my I pad connected thru my company blackberry connected to a special dedicated flex 3000 with the ability to switch antennas and run 1500 watts from another solid state amp on all bands and I only lost connectivity three times. I have removed all my mobil gear and eagerly await. The over the wan!

Nick - W2NER

Yes, just like the TS-2000 will do.  My error for not being clear.  Its a cross band repeat function on the TS-2000 that I use to use.

Ken - NM9P

AMateur radio terminology gets distorted and misapplied over the decades when new hams learn the terms used by the older ones and shorten them or apply them in new ways without fully understanding the history and the technology behind them.

For example:
Hams have been doing "crossband operation" since the beginning of radio because they had separate receivers and transmitters.  THe transmitters were usually home built "spark gap" or later crystal controlled transmitters that were good for only a single band.  Or a ham might only be able to afford one or two crystals for the transmitter.

Hams used to call CQ and then tune the whole band, looking for a call from another ham whose single crystal might be 100 KHz away from the calling frequency.  Sometimes a ham might call CQ on one band and listen on another in order to take advantage of propagation and rig differences.  This early "crossband operation" was standard procedure for many decades until multiband transmitters, and later multi-band transceivers became the norm.

Hams have been doing "Remote operation" for decades also, using a UHF linking receiver and transmitter (or dedicated phone line).  Extensive regulations were published by the FCC to govern these operations, which were expensive, rare, but effective in many parts of the country.

In the late 60's early 0's hams began to take advantage of changes in commercial VHF/UHF standards and picked up lots of inexpensive surplus business band/public service equipment and started pioneering "repeaters" -- a receiver/transmitter combination that would "repeat" someone's mobile signal from a much taller tower or mountain top.  This combination, self-contained system, known as a "Repeater" became the norm in the 70's, also heavily regulated at first by the FCC.

When multi-band and later "dual-band" rigs (capable of simultaneous operation on BOTH bands) were introduced, some industrious hams figured out how to forge a manual link between the two sides of their rigs and do "crossband linking" in order to access their car or base station dual band rig with their multi band or dual band HT.  Manufacturers took note, and when FCC rules were relaxed, began incorporating this capability natively into their rigs.

Then Kenwood introduced the TS2000, one of the first rigs that included not only HF-6 meters, but also a VHF and UHF module that was able to link to it's HF module and "Crossband repeating" became possible from within the same rig.

This activity became popular among many new hams who shorted the term to "Crossbanding" or working "crossband,"  apparently unaware of the previous usage of the terms.  (or perhaps out of linguistic laziness.)  

This is another example of how younger and newer generations of hams often use the same or similar terminology to mean vastly different things.  (I will never fully adjust to the 11 1/2 meter terminology of "working conditions" to refer to my "rig and antenna!".... but I guess that makes me an old timer!)

The bottom line is that I can forsee the possibility of the 6700 doing "Crossband repeating" at some point in time because it has dual SCU's.  But the 6500 & 6300 would probably have a more difficult time doing that.  But "Crossband operation" - i.e. transmitting on one band and listening on another -- is possible on many, if not most modern rigs, including all of the flex rigs.  Full-duplex crossband may be possible if the SCU and Transmitting sections are able to run simultaneously.   I believe that in previous threads Steve said this MIGHT be possible, given enough isolation between transmitting and receiving antennas.  But it is a project for another day, a long way off.
The neat thing is that this may just a "simple matter of software!"  hi hi!

73 and enjoy these marvelous rigs that keep evolving with more and more capabilities!

Ken - NM9P

Martin Bérubé

Hi,

I have just completed this proof of concept software to add the crossband capability to a flexradio. Like the TS-2000 does.

https://github.com/va2px/flexcrossband

Enjoy!

Martin Bérubé

Further to the post above:

It work with Frstack3 and Python.  

In a era of remote operations and Smartlink, this feature sounds silly but we never know when someome might need it. Anyway, I enjoyed working on its developement. lol  

Any ideas for improvement are welcome.