PLC's and HAM Radio

Hams have hooked a lot of stuph up to their radio equipment over the years, any body hook up a plc?

Also, any hams wishing to post their call, please do so.

I will make a list, and post it somewhere with a link given to anyone who lists.

If you do not want to be listed on the forum, PM me, and I will put it on the list for other hams to see, only.

Link or list will not be given to anyone who is not listed in qrz.com.

--... ...-- casey kc9ih

If you have a HAM radio that provides digital or analog outputs, and can recognize digital or analog inputs, then it would be possible to connect them together.

Now for my question: For what purpose?

Do you want the PLC to:
1] tune the receiver
2] count transmissions
3] count transmission time
4] time broadcasts

If you're just playing around, I suggest building (your son) a model railroad layout - plenty of places to practice with PLC's automating things just for the experience.

Well Greg, my guess is that you are probably not a ham operator.

If you look at my profile, it lists trains before radios, then plc's.

Hams don't really need a reason. I saw one guy who had a rotor mounted inside the passenger compartment of his car, with a mast pipe going thru the roof to a 10 element UHF yagi antenna (kinda like a vertical TV antenna), controlled by an embedded processor (quasi plc) to rotate it so that when he was driving and turned a corner, the antenna would stay aimed at whoever he was talking to. You could walk around his car with a walkie talkie and it would track you, two guys with walkie talkies on opposite sides of the car would drive it nuts turning back and forth.

Some guys are into satellite communications. and have azimuth and elevation rotors controlled by a pc, so a plc could probably do the same.

Some guys have collapsable towers, so an aenemometer (engineers can't spell, a wind thing with rotating cups) could control a micro to lower the tower when the wind got to strong.

And on, and on....

best regards, or 73's, as the case may be.....casey

kc9ih said:

I saw one guy who had a rotor mounted inside the passenger compartment of his car, with a mast pipe going thru the roof to a 10 element UHF yagi antenna (kinda like a vertical TV antenna), controlled by an embedded processor (quasi plc) to rotate it so that when he was driving and turned a corner, the antenna would stay aimed at whoever he was talking to. You could walk around his car with a walkie talkie and it would track you, two guys with walkie talkies on opposite sides of the car would drive it nuts turning back and forth.

Click to expand...

Not the kind of car you'd describe as a 'chick magnet', huh?...

beerchug

-Eric

Hi Casey,
Glad to have you post my call here. I noticed your call a while back when you posted. I haven't hooked up a PLC to the rig yet but it does sound interesting. Some folks may wonder about that, what with all the digital advances that have been made and the bells and whistles...hi hi. But, being the eternal experimenter, if ya can't take it apart, it ain't worth havin'. Now...back to my junk box. 73's Casey. Btw, the wife won't ride in the car with me now and I only have the 5/8 2mtr and 1/4 vhf...wonder what she'd do if I installed that rotor set-up

Bob WD8BDN

Eric: You wouldn't think of the car as a chick magnet, but it could start a conversation. Probably could pick chicks up at a bar, as a UFO spotter, secret agent, rocket tracker scientist, or ???

Like everything else, even ham radio has an occaisional "groupie" show up.

Bob: Thanks for checking in. Ur YF wud prpbably hang ur laundry on the yagi!



--.- .-. --..

Surely there are more hams out there............

--... ...-- / -.. . / -.- -.-. ----. .. ....

KX2G Checking in here...

Well, for what it's worth, I've always been a scrounger type of amateur (except for my bug collection, but that's another story). Because of that I guess, I've never considered using a PLC for any application, including Repeater Controllers.

Microchip PIC microcomputers are dirt cheap, and are a heck of a lot of fun to play around with for projects. For more power, I actually like moving up to someones old junk PC of almost any flavor, though I find it easiest to do things with old IBM XT/AT boxes running DOS.

Another company that is one of my favorites for playing around with is Maxim (No, not the magazine... http://www.maxim-ic.com/ ). They have amazingly useful (and odd) IC's, and since they will often send out samples, they are extremely Ham friendly

HAM here, just wish I had some eggs to go with it!

WB4RWZ here, first licensed in 1970 as conditional class then upgraded to general and then advanced. I did the general and the advanced test all in the same visit to the FCC field office. See, it's been a long time since there was an FCC field office. That was in the pre Volunteer Examiner days. I used to do a lot of HF work, 75 meters mostly and phone, never was a fan of CW. Worked state and regional traffic nets but that was a long time back. Have no HF gear anymore and only a very old HeathKit 2m xcvr. I have not logged a single on-air-minute in so long I don't remember the last time. I have a very old vertical antenna to go with the 2m rig and both are about on their last legs. Maybe when I retire there will be some time to HAM again. As for PLCs on HAM gear, not in my world, but there may be someone who has found a unique use for one. I tend to keep the PLCs in the plants where they do the most cost effective good. I am always open for new ideas though.
Casey, thanks for the effort to compile HAM interests! I suppose there are a lot of us that let the hobby lead us to a working career.

A lab instructor of mine back when I was in school was big into Amatuer radio. He had a setup where he was sending data back and forth between the school and his house over the radios. The baud rate was low, like 9600 or something. But he would pull up the weather at his house and had some kind of email system to send messages between him and his buddies.

You could probably incorporate a PLC into that type of system and be able to turn things on and off at your house remotely.

Here are some of my Misperceptions of Ham Radio.

*Morse Code is very very difficult to learn.
*You must master it before you can get a license.
W means East of the Missisipi... K means West.

--... ...-- means 73
I Found thiis out from this
MorseCode Translator

IFound out what 73 means

here

You can get a license that allows you to operate on Ham bands over 50MHz, including voice and data, without knowing Morse code. They are also pushing now to completely do away with Morse code. If anyone is interested in Ham radio, www.arrl.org is a good place to start.

73

Joe
KC8UHT

I remember fondly the first time I used a computer on the HF bands. My Commodore 64 running RTTY with Airdisk software by MicroLog...I loved it. Not quite PLC control...but it was a blast. It wasn't even the hyper speed of 9600baud that glaverty related...hi hi. I think the '64 still resides in the garage somewhere. I was first lincensed in 1976 as a Novice and soon found my way to General. How I hated the trips to the FCC field office. Back then, 10M was my band of choice, what with Sunspot Cycle 21 or 22 I believe it was, working the World was a never ending adventure. CW was a lot of fun too and not all that hard to master, I found. Except that infernal speed of 13wpm. I must admit to trying once, when first learning to program PLC's, to construct a program to key out CQ...just for the heck of it. I won't go into the miserable results of that one. See you all later on down the page.

73's
Bob

I can't believe I misspelled
M, I, Crooked Letter, Crooked letter, I ,Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, I, Humpback, Humpback, I

Mississippi is easy, but I battle with the spelling of Cincinnati every time...

The Ns and Ts are simply done
When written down as 1-2-1

beerchug

-Eric

Already Done

KC8WIK hr

WE use data radios allot in RTU or remote terminal units. Usually in the waste or water treatment process. They are handy for PLC's out in the boondocks. The band is 900 MHz and is spread spectrum, but guess what.. the radio is nothing more than a packet system, as you are probably already familiar with. If you have a TNC you could probably set up the rascal to talk to any PLC through it's serial port.
just a....
Bitmore