18
Approximate BCD Control Line Lengths.
Minimum Copper
Wire Gage (AWG)
Length
24
1,000 feet
22
1,500 feet
20
2,000 feet
Active antenna circuitry needs a good voltage supply to operate properly. When supplying power to
an active antenna, you want to have +12 VDC, 60 milliamps at each active (under load).
CAT5e cable is not recommended when making long runs to power an active antenna since the line
loss in CAT5e cable may not supply the proper operational voltages required for active antennas.
Depending on the required length of your power wire, you will want to use a line loss calculator
(voltage drop with various wire gages) to ensure your power supply (no13.6 well filtered
DC) will supply a minimum of +12 VDC, 60 milliamps at each active antenna (under load).
A DX Engineering 4 Square or 8 Circle will require approximately 250 milliamps (only 4 actives
are powered at any one time).
When calculating line length, take into consideration the total number of active antennas being
powered at any one time in your line length calculations.
Approximate Active Antenna Power Line Lengths (4 active antennas on at any one time).
Minimum Copper
Wire Gage (AWG)
Length
18
300 Feet
16
500 feet
12
1,200 feet
10
2,000 feet
Default Configuration
The
DXE-RFS-SYS-4P
default configuration, as shown in
Diagram 1
, uses terminals A & B for
the BCD directional control interface and terminal C for operational and active element power. The
DXE-EC-4
provides the operational power as well as the 2-bit BCD interface used for directional
control. A user-supplied 4-conductor cable is needed to connect the
DXE-RFS-2
and the
DXE-EC-
4
with the included
DXE-TVSU-1B
Time Variable Sequencer Unit switching the active antenna
power conductor.
