ATU Multiple Memories

Bill / VA3QB

I know it took a while to get ATU Memory tuning and I do love it.

   My suggestion is in a future version of SSDR that there be something like Memory 1, Memory 2, Memory 3  buttons etc. for the ATU. 

   In my case I have three HF antenna's. HF (20-15-10 band) beam, OCF Windom Dipole for most bands and a 6 meter beam and these antennas are fed to a remote antenna switch on the tower with a single cable entering the shack so using the second antenna port on my 6500 is not an option for me.
When I switch antenna's,  the ATU memory has to retune for any of the bands that are shared by these antenna's.
   It would be nice to select the antenna memory as described above and I could select my antenna of choice and it's ATU memories saved. 

  Not sure if this is possible but needed to ask.

73
Bill
VA3QB

Tim - W4TME

That would be a little difficult because the radio will not know about which external antenna is used.  However, the ATU memories are already antenna port specific in the current release of SmartSDR.

Bill / VA3QB

Tim my thinking is that for each antenna port there would be a bank of antenna memories.  When I switch to my second antenna , then I would switch to Memory 2 and so on.  There could be a second/third bank of memories for antenna port 2.  Assuming in my example that I'm only using antenna port 1. So using only antenna port 1 and using Memory Bank 1, I would know that this is my HF Beam.  When I want to use my Dipole, I would switch the antenna on port one to my dipole then I would switch to Memory Bank 2. Now the ATU would know all the memory tuning points for this antenna from previous use.

Bill 

Tim - W4TME

It does that now based on the TX antenna port.  It is automatic; no buttons to select.

Ken - NM9P

One thing I have not figured out how to do is this:
I would like the ATU Memory to remember that on 20-6 meters the tuner is Bypassed, but that on 30-160 the tuner is in line and the tuning parameters are remembered.

Is this possible?  I don't need the tuner with my T-11 Log Periodic.

Ken - NM9P

Tim - W4TME

Ken - Bypass is a valid ATU memory match state.  So you can "train" it by using a dummy load (or your antenna) and running ATU tune operations across the bands.  The result of the ATU tuning operation will be bypass is the best "match" and it will not try and retune unless to instruct it to by clicking the ATU button.  This might be a little "clunky" but it will work.

I did something similiar with my 6m beam that has a good match @ 50.125 by by 52MHz, it needs a better match.  So I ran ATU tunes every 200 kHz or so for the entire 6m band.

Bill / VA3QB

Tim

Sorry I must not be getting my point across properly. 
 I have a remote antenna switch on the tower outside with 3 antennas connected to it.  There is only one cable coming into the house for HF from the antenna switch. So the second tx port is not able to help. Only one cable comes to the radio from the tower but 3 antennas using the radio. 

Thanks for your input ... 

Bill 
VA3QB

Tim - W4TME

No, your point came across crystal clear.  I know what you want, but the issue is that the ATU memories are specific for an antenna port.  Since you have an external switch with multiple antennas per port on the radio, the SmartSDR software has no way of knowing exactly which antenna is actually connected to it.  Therefore the automatic mode of operation now has a manual element to it (selecting the correct memory bank).  Not saying this can't be done, but without feedback to the radio on the connected antenna state, there is an opportunity to associate the wrong memory bank with a particular antenna.

Ken - NM9P

Thanks, Tim.
One question...  How many different ATU Memories are allocated to each band/antenna port?  I tested by simply running around the band and tuning the LP and got to a point that it would seem to lose the memory if I did too many, but I don't know how many is "too many?"

Bill-before I got the LP up, I used two antennas on the same port, using a remote antenna switch.  If I used one (a OCF Dipole) for the lower bands and another (a homebrew Vertical) for the higher bands, the ATU memory would remember the settings for each band.  But if I used the Dipole antenna on bands that were already tuned on the Vertical antenna, then obviously i needed to retune the ATU.  There is no way for the 6500 to know which one I have connected unless I use the second TX antenna input.  It is going to be a smart ATU, but it isn't THAT smart! ha. 

But I understand your point is that you would like a manual memory mode button to select multiple banks of memory for each Antenna input so you could use the remote switch and manually select a different bank for each antenna, even if it is used on the same antenna port?

Ken - NM9P

Bill / VA3QB

But I understand your point is that you would like a manual memory mode button to select multiple banks of memory for each Antenna input so you could use the remote switch and manually select a different bank for each antenna, even if it is used on the same antenna port?  ...............            

Yes Ken that is it.  

The memory button(s)  could be user configurable.   So the label could be changed to something like "ATU - Memory OCF"     another button could be "ATU- Memory TH Beam"  with the number of buttons defined and the labels editable. That way when I select   "ATU - Memory OCF"  it will remember any previous tubing points for that antenna only.

Thanks everyone for trying understand my thoughts...   
Wifes says I need to be clearer. Can't argue with that shes the one that OKed the radio purchase ! 

Bill

W9OY

Why don't you put a switch on the coax at the shack end and switch between ant ports on the radio as you change bands.  This is virtually the same as having antenna bank 1 and antenna bank 2, but you do have to be smart enough to change the switch between ports and in the radio.  If you presently switch the remote antenna switch manually it's not hard to just add two more step in band switching and the tuner will be tuned correctly.  

You can make it switch automatically if you use a relay controlled by DDUTIL and you store memories in FRStack with the correct antenna path memorized.  Then simply use FRStack as your bandswitch.  Or you can have DDUTIL run your antenna switch at the tower so the correct antenna is always chosen for a given band automatically.  This is what I do and I never think about my antennas when changing bands.  Then the tuner in the 6500 automatically just sets itself for the antenna chosen at the freq chosen.  Both of these solutions close the feedback loop based on a band+specific antenna choice criteria.

Bill / VA3QB

Interesting Idea Lee... 

Only covers 2 of my 3 present antennas and I'm thinking of adding a 80 meter loop antenna next year making 4.

I'm not sure if the Flex 6xxx  has it's own built in ram just for tuning memories that would limit changes or uses the PC system ram. My thought was that if it uses PC system ram then creating banks would be a fairly easy thing to do in the grand scheme of things. 

Best part about the Flex SDR radio is that we can even have this conversation that includes Flex.  Try that with Yaesu or Kenwood !!! 

Thanks for listening ! 

Bill

sdelmont

> @"Tim - W4TME" said:
> No, your point came across crystal clear.  I know what you want, but the issue is that the ATU memories are specific for an antenna port.  Since you have an external switch with multiple antennas per port on the radio, the SmartSDR software has no way of knowing exactly which antenna is actually connected to it.  Therefore the automatic mode of operation now has a manual element to it (selecting the correct memory bank).  Not saying this can't be done, but without feedback to the radio on the connected antenna state, there is an opportunity to associate the wrong memory bank with a particular antenna.

Sorry to reopen this old discussion, but I could not find any updates on this matter.

I think what VA3QB was asking for is exactly what you refer to in "but without feedback to the radio on the connected antenna state", or as he puts it "a manual memory mode button to select multiple banks of memory for each Antenna input".

Once you add an antenna switch to the mix, you're throwing away "automatic mode of operation", but the current state of things ensures that ATU memories are not to be relied, no matter what. There's nothing I can do right now, even if it meant pressing more buttons, that can allow me to make sure the antenna I know I'm using is properly tuned across a band.

Switching antennas in the middle of a contest requires me to watch my meters and be ready to retune any time I QSY.

How is this handled by the AntennaGenius, by the way? Is there an API call one can use to implement memory banks using external software like FRStack?

ky4ub

I would like to second sdelmont's question about the Antenna Genius; is there a way to manually select previously stored tuning solutions in cases where the AG is not able to tune for timing reasons? Manual selection for a table of stored tuning solutions would be a useful backup capability and easier than creating a spreadsheet of C1, L, C2 values and manually setting them. Even better if we could have thes values added to the Memory Channel table to associate these previously tuned solutions with a frequency, antenna, mode, etc.