new tower site 275 feet from my shack

James Kennedy-WU5E

with the new purchase of 8600M I'm building new tower. The tower will be 275 feet from the shack. I will be mounting the AGXL on the LM-470. What type of LAN cable can I use to maintain and bury going to the AGXL?

Jim-WU5E

KD0RC

Hi Jim, I would look into using fiber. It will easily do that length, and just requires a converter box at each end to take it back to copper ethernet cables.

Alan

I have used an recommend these products for a fiber to remote radio connection:

Switch with SFP slot:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084JFPDT4/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

SFP to RJ45 media converter:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006ML8DCI/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

LC Multimode SFP module:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B47SSHH/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Direct Bury LC LC OM3 Cable:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X13L6ZY/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Alan WA9WUD

James Kennedy-WU5E

Thank, I have to put A/C out at the tower site now my next contract to write is a tower site crew to build tower base a stand the LM-470 up and wire it up. I'm still six months since left knee replacement.

WX7Y

I just did this, Running 100 meters of SM fiber out to my new shop.

DON'T bother with Copper Ethernet cable and the problems with Static and grounds loops.

Amazon has pretty good prices on armored Single Mode outdoor fiber that I put in conduit so I could also pull something else in the future. Converters and SFP Transducers are very reasonable priced these days compared to Copper.

I plugged one end of my fiber into my main 26 port Netgear Switch and the other end into a 10Gtek converter box with a matching 10Gtek SFP's This works really well and I can vouch for the toughness of the fiber, If you don't have a Switch with a SFP port then you could just buy 2 SFP converter box's if you only need one connection or have a Ethernet switch.

Here is what I used

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CFMZSGN5/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U8PN0NQ/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0719HS31P/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Duane N9DG

I'd strongly consider going with outdoor rated fiber but NOT armored. The metallic armor defeats one of the key features of fiber, i.e. it being an electrically non-conductive medium. Having no metal is definitely helpful for lightning reasons.

When I did my fiber run I was able to easily find unarmored outdoor rated jacket fiber for the wet conditions, and presumably sunlight protection. But since I ran mine through a conduit, only the wet conditions protection was important to me. It's been in a known wet conduit run for about 7 years at this point. Doing just fine.

And have the electrical contractor do your conduit runs as well. I'd recommend keeping the fiber runs in its own conduit, separate from the coax runs or AC power. So basically a minimum of 3 runs. And doing all conduits give a you a bit of future proofing for possible later changes.

Duane

N9DG

W2PP

will CAT 7 or 8 work. Way easier and far less expensive

Peter

Mike-VA3MW

Hi James

Fiber is by far the best way to go. It is less expensive and designed to do exactly. A buddy of mine just did this for a 300’ run and I don’t think it cost him $200 in Fiber and Media converters.

And, consider this.

Why not place the radio at the base of the tower? You then gain back all the lost RF in the coax for both RX and TX. You’ll hear more, your transmitted signal will have more RF out and it is a huge financial saving. Of course, you will have the expensive of getting AC power out there.

I do some of that today with my AG, RG and Steppir Controller. They are at the base of the tower. However, my Tower is not that far away.

Give that some thought.

W2PP

I have a Stepper controller. How exactly do you control it remotely?

Alan

Please explain more by what you mean "remotely".

Alan. WA9WUD

Mike-VA3MW

For my Steppir controller I have an RS232 line to the RS232 port on the controller. Then, I use an Application on NodeRed that gives me a webpage view.

I haven't touched it for years, but it looks like this

W2PP

ah ha