"Mark" wrote:


Can I simply build myself a switch box? Put each antenna onto a common bus
and use switches to assign to the various outputs that are connected to the
various receivers?

Can it be that simple? And what of using two antennas at once? Anybody
experimented with this? Any gain (no pun intended) in doing that?

Well, you could buy a coax switch to switch between your antennas and
then use multicouplers to distribute the RF around.

I made a simple phasing box that couples two antennas and allows me to
select one, the other, both in phase and 180 degrees out of phase. It
works, but...

You only get 3dB gain on a good day, and that is certainly lost among
the couplers and isolation transformers needed. Occasionally I get
spectacular results in eliminating phasing, but overall the project
was a failure.

The advantage of feeding from multiple antennas is reducing fading and
steering the reception pattern. To do that properly a better system
than my passive arrangement needs to be done. See Ron Hardin's post
about using ANC-4s as phaser-combiners.

Eric

--
Eric F. Richards,
"Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn't
the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it's the offense
that I take most personally."
-- http://www.reason.com/links/links071304.shtml

Wow, thank you, thank you and thank you to everybody who replied! Can't
believe the response and all the great ideas!

Yes, think I've got the audio part all worked out (through my amp and
speakers - excellent!) and makes it easy to record direct to CD or to tape
through my home studio setup (complete with compressor, noise gates,
expander etc). But the stuff about configuring my antennas is great!

Thanks again,
Mark.


"Mark" wrote in message
...
Hi...

I currently have four Sony HF radios which will shortly be joined a JRC
NRD-545. I also currently have two antennas, a longwire and a di-pole.

Time for a tidy-up! What does everybody do when they want to share two or
three antennas amongst several radios (short of constanly unplugging and
replugging everything)?

Can I simply build myself a switch box? Put each antenna onto a common bus
and use switches to assign to the various outputs that are connected to
the
various receivers?

Can it be that simple? And what of using two antennas at once? Anybody
experimented with this? Any gain (no pun intended) in doing that?

I'm thinking of feeding all the record outputs to a small multi-channel
mixer. (I currently have a home recording studio, so I can then feed the
output to a nice amp and set of speakers).

Mark.