Homebrewed Wireless Remote Antenna Switch

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Here's the question. Do you have multiple cables coming into your radio room or do you need additional cables coming into your radio room from a ex another antenna that you might have outside or something like that? If you do, there's another option besides running a piece of cable from inside the radio room out to where your antenna may be or uh whatever you've got outside. And that is a remote antenna switch wireless. So, you're not required to run any control cabling out to the uh remote switch or anything like that. And today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you all of the details on the one that I built, Homebrew, and uh how it works and such as that.

[00:01:03]So, here we go. Inside here, the heart of the wireless remote antenna switch is the switch itself. All these pieces can be picked up off of Amazon for a relatively inexpensive price. I won't say they're cheap, but they're relatively inexpensive.

[00:01:26]What I picked up was an AT-16 that you can see right here.

[00:01:33]Antenna switch. Now, this has a control comes with a control cable that plugs in right here that goes back to a switch that you have in the shack.

[00:01:44]And you put this antenna switch in a box such as I have or if you have something that's inside out in the field then you can do that. But uh this is the heart of it. This is a six port. There's several different varieties of this that you can get off of Amazon. This is the six port switch.

[00:02:08]They have a four- port switch and they have various methods of operating uh the internal relays to the switch to determine what antenna you may want to use. So, the one that I picked uh is this one here. It comes already pre-mounted inside of a box and it comes with a control that is well, let's just say it's it functions. I won't say much more than that about the control, but it does work and it works well. And we'll look at the control in a minute, but I have since done away with that control and made this wireless.

[00:02:50]You can get just the circuit board that's inside this unit right here off of Amazon for probably half the price, but you have to buy your SO239 connectors and some kind of a box. But for some people that may work out better because uh you may already have someplace that you want to mount a board like this uh mounted inside of some type of a unit that you may want to mount the board on.

[00:03:20]inside that unit already and then uh wire out your antenna ports to a panel or something like that. So, there's several different varieties. I picked this one. The price difference between the four and the six port switch is very minimal. I think it's probably less than $10 difference in price between the four port and the six port switch. So, I opted for the six port switch.

[00:03:49]The control that I opted for that came with this switch right here that we'll look at in a minute is uh was the cheapest control. It was an older model, but I knew I was going to be replacing that control anyway. So, uh I just picked up the one that fit my budget based on what I knew I was going to do with the uh antenna switch when I got it.

[00:04:16]Uh we're going to talk about the specs on the switch in a minute and its performance, insertion loss, and VSWR uh in just a minute. Uh first, let's go take a look at the control and we'll have to go to another room. I haven't pulled that control out yet, uh because it's running by cable out to the backyard, which I'm trying to get rid of. So, stand by while we go to the remote.

[00:04:44]This is the remote that came with the antenna switch. And you can see it has LEDs to tell you which antenna is active. Then it has a push button. You have to toggle through these antennas one at a time. So let's say you're on antenna one and you want to go to five.

[00:05:07]Well, you got to scroll past two, three, and four to get to five. And if you're on five and want to go to one, you have to go six then back to one. So it runs in a circle and anyway wasn't too happy with it. And you have to solder connectors and this is where your power goes in which is not optimal.

[00:05:32]So anyway, let me go show you what I did. Let's go back to the other room.

[00:05:38]When you get this antenna switch, it does not come with a control cable itself. It comes with two connectors, these right here.

[00:05:50]And you have to provide your own cable and do some solder work on these micro fine pins to uh get a control cable between the remote, the wired remote and this antenna switch itself.

[00:06:11]So unless you really like soldering, you're not going to like that part right there. That is the one downside that I would say there is to this switch. But what it does do is it provides you the opportunity to make a cable the length that you want it. You're not stuck with a cable the length uh that came from the factory or anything like that.

[00:06:41]So, that was not fun soldering that connector right there.

[00:06:48]Uh because you're you're soldering Ethernet cable, which is what it uses for control cable. Uses a uh 8 conductor Ethernet cable, four twisted pair Ethernet cable. So, what else can I tell you about this? I chose to mount my antenna switch inside this box right here that you can see.

[00:07:17]And I did not want to run cables from the outside directly into the box. So I use these connectors right here and put six connectors. We've got the input from the radio and then antenna one, two, three, four, five, and six. So, I can put up to six antennas on this box right here and switch between them.

[00:07:51]Uh, what else can I tell you about this?

[00:07:54]Let's uh let's talk about the insertion loss and the VSWR on the switch itself.

[00:08:02]It is very good from about 1 megahertz up to 30 megahertz.

[00:08:12]The highest insertion loss which is at the about uh 28 29 megahertz the highest is a minus10 dB not minus 10 dB not minus1 dB minus one so there's very little signal loss within this unit in itself so that is uh very encouraging and you can see well we'll do this in a minute and the VWR is somewhere between 1.03 to 1.05 to one very little uh VWR problems with this right here and just to show you how it works. Well, let's look at the wireless first.

[00:09:09]Seeing how I did not want to use the wired control for this because it required running quite a bit of Ethernet cable from the shack out to where this antenna switch was going to be. I opted to pick up off of Amazon again this wireless relay box. And what this does, this has eight relays on the box itself. Let's see if I can stay still enough where you can see it.

[00:09:47]So, it's got the voltage input right here and then four ports on this side, four ports on the other side. Normally open and normally close sets of contacts so you can pick what you need.

[00:10:04]The antenna switch works off of 20. No, excuse me. The antenna switch works off of 12 volts.

[00:10:15]So, it has a ground on each port at all times. When 12 volts is applied to any one of the antenna ports, that antenna port becomes active.

[00:10:26]So, what what I did here was I just wired 24 volts to the common of six relays. Actually, I wired it to all eight just in case I needed something else, but I only use six of the eight relays here.

[00:10:44]Uh wired 12 volts to that. The 12 volts I'm getting from an adapter here. So, uh just any old adapter will do. anything that provides 12 volts. This one happens to be an old Direct TV adapter, but the that Direct TV adapter provides 12 volts to the relay box.

[00:11:06]Excuse me. Yeah, to the wireless relay box and to the antenna switch itself.

[00:11:14]So, that's where the voltage comes from.

[00:11:18]Now, uh this is kind of funny. The hardest thing And the biggest problem I had with this wireless device when I got it was the remote itself.

[00:11:35]This is the remote.

[00:11:37]And when I got it, I could not figure out what was wrong. I thought the batteries were bad. Tested the batteries. They were good. Put in fresh batteries anyway. Went to learn mode on the receiver to try to reprogram it.

[00:11:50]Couldn't get anything to do do anything.

[00:11:53]uh just trying to figure out what was wrong and it turned out and this is the funny part.

[00:12:02]This remote, you look at it, it looks pretty simple, right? Well, in the same color orange, there was an onoff switch on the side.

[00:12:13]It blended in perfectly. You couldn't tell what it was. So, what I did with this one was color it with a Sharpie.

[00:12:20]And when you uh once I turn that on, everything worked just fine. So, the wireless works really good. It's got good range. I've only tested it out to about 100 ft. That's the biggest distance I've got here at this QTH where I currently am. Uh right now, it's set for relay 8. I don't have anything on relay 8. Uh, that's what the LEDs tell you right here. And as you can see, nothing's lit up. But let's switch to antenna port one and watch what happens.

[00:13:02]We'll turn on the remote, push it up, and hit a uh first off, let's look at the Nano VNA.

[00:13:13]We can see we've got uh over 50 dB of loss because the port's not active and the SWR is off the chart infinity. Now let's hit number one.

[00:13:33]All right, antenna port one is now active.

[00:13:37]Let's see what the results are.

[00:13:43]We have a VSWR of 1.051 to one and a loss insertion loss of a negative10 dB. So it's very good. I have tested all six ports on this switch and they all test the same. U very happy with it so far. So, let's see what else can I tell you about it. I always go back to port 8 to turn off the antenna switch.

[00:14:20]Uh what this does also does this antenna switch is for any inactive antenna ports the ones that you're not using it grounds the conduct the conducting uh center pin of the coax. So it grounds that so that there's no uh interference from the other antennas. They're not just sitting there open.

[00:14:51]Uh, what else do you need? So, so, so do keep that in mind in case you run something where you put voltage on your coax for a antenna tuner or something like that. Make sure you take that into consideration. I do run a remote antenna tuner on antenna number one here, but I'm just aware of that fact and I don't try to I just make sure that I don't try to tune some antenna that's grounded.

[00:15:21]It's just something you need to be aware of.

[00:15:26]I'm trying to think what else there is to say about this. The wireless excellent so far. I've got two spare ports.

[00:15:35]Uh what else can I say?

[00:15:40]The connector is a eight pin control cable connector.

[00:15:45]Uh pins 1 through six provide 25 vol excuse me pins 1 through six provide 12 volts to whichever antenna is active.

[00:15:57]Antenna 1 through six.

[00:16:00]Pin seven is the ground. That is a ground for this unit. And pin eight is not used. Pin eight is only used if you're using the remote that came with the antenna switch itself.

[00:16:15]So that's kind of the setup on this. Uh I may add on to this video. I'm not sure if I will or not, but I may add on to it where I have this mounted. I've already had it mounted using the the wired remote and I've used the antenna switch.

[00:16:36]I like it a lot. It's really nice because, you know, how many times do we put up something and we want to switch back and forth between two antennas and we either have to go out and do it manually or we've got an antenna box or we have multiple cables running into the shack. this takes and uh makes it possible to do test multiple antennas or switch back and forth between antennas.

[00:17:02]Let's say you have one a dipole that's broadside north and south. You can have a second one broadside east and west and you can switch back and forth between the two. It saves on a rotor uh and a antenna uh that'll accept the rotor if you have a couple of trees where you can string up the dip holes.

[00:17:27]So, I think that's it. There's not really a lot to say. I will say what I have um on mine for my antenna port one I have a multiband vertical that I use with a remote antenna tuner at the feed point. The second one is a dipole antenna which made out of telescopic whips that I use from 10 to 20 meters.

[00:17:53]So that always stays on this one. And on port three I have a loop on the ground.

[00:17:59]I'm kind of in a a high noise situation here sometimes. So, if I'm running 40 meters, sometimes noise is so bad it's hard to uh to copy things. But that loop on the ground, I've been pretty happy with that. Uh yeah, pretty happy with that. So, that's something that's permanent here at the QTH now. So vertical dipole loop on the ground and I have three more ports to do whatever may uh satisfy what I'm trying to do at the moment. So anyway, if you got any questions, post them down below. Uh I try to answer any questions that come along. Uh again, all this can be bought off of Amazon.

[00:18:46]Oh, one thing I don't think I mentioned.

[00:18:47]This wireless remote works on 433 megahertz.

[00:18:53]So, I haven't had any problems with uh this being outside in I won't say close proximity, but within uh the general area of my HF antennas, I haven't had any problems at all. And this is very low noise. I take a um a choke and put on the input cable right here. All these uh all the grounds, all the shields are grounded together. If you take a ohm meter and measure, you'll see there's continuity between all the all the shields of the cable and this one coming in. So, by putting a a ferite core wrapped with some coax uh right here, that has cut noise way down. I don't have any SWR problems or anything like that. So, uh if you like this, give it a thumbs up. Share it with somebody if you think it'll help them.

[00:19:56]This will definitely keep you from having to run extra cable into the shack. Uh, I think a lot of us probably use no more than two cables at any time.

[00:20:07]I will say at my previous QTH, I had four cables running into the house coming through the ceiling. So, with this, I've got one cable and that one cable I'm good with. So, suits my needs, it may help you out, too. Anyway, if you like this video, give it a thumbs up, share it with somebody. If you haven't haven't subscribed, consider doing that.

[00:20:30]Until the next time.