Hamplus MBD-62 Automatic Antenna Switch Controller

The MBD-62 Automatic Antenna Switch Controller is an intelligent controller compatible with all antenna switches manufactured by Hamplus and a few other manufacturers. It is designed specifically for the Hamplus AS-62 Antenna Switch and has two band decoders to receive the information coming from two interfaced transceivers.

In addition to antenna switching, the MBD-62 also offers sixteen GPOs (General Purpose Outputs), eight for each transceiver, which can be used to control two band pass filters or command the tuning box of shortened antennas with high Q coils or are simply triggered when a desired frequency or band is detected.

There are four ways in which antennas can be selected:

1. Manually by using the front panel of the MBD-62.

2. Manually by changing the frequency or band on the front panel of the transceiver.

3. Automatically by frequency or band change by the remotely controlled transceiver.

4. Automatically by a connected personal computer via RS-232 serial port or LAN port with the MBD-62.

On the front panel, there is a set of two lines of six illuminated push buttons for manual selection of antennas, one LED for each radio to indicate when transmitting, one LED for each radio indicates that the MBD-62 is in "Split Antenna" mode and one LED to indicate when the MBD-62 is energized.

The MBD-62 receives from the transceiver DC power (13.8 Vdc), "Send" ground-on-transmit keying line and the frequency information about the band in use, all via interface cables (not included).

The MBD-62 controller recognizes communications from the following transceivers:

• CI-V (Icom)

• BCD (Yaesu and Elecraft)

• RS-232 (Kenwood and Elecraft)

• Frequency Driven GPO

The MBD-62 provides up to eight tuning points for automatically controlling shortened antennas with high Q coils. These tuning points are easily found by the operator using the radio and push buttons. The MBD-62 only needs one cable to automatically control most of the band pass filters on the market and can be set to Active High (+12V) or Active Low (Gnd).

Dimensions: 8.46 in. (21.5 cm) X 5.71 in. (14.5 cm) X 2.36 in. (6 cm)

Weight: 1.53 lbs. (0.700 kg)

Packaged Dimensions: 10.63 in. (27 cm) X 6.30 in. (16 cm) X 5.12 in. (13 cm)

Packaged Weight: 1.98 lbs. (0.900 kg)