[time-nuts] Can a Symmetricom 58532A antenna and ham radio transmitters coexist?

Pete Stephenson pete at heypete.com
Thu Apr 14 05:01:12 EDT 2016


Hi all,

I recently acquired a pair of Symmetricom 58532A antennas and so far
they work great with my setup (antenna --> Symmetricom 58535A splitter
--> [1] Thunderbolt and [2] other receivers that I swap out
occasionally).

I'm also an amateur radio operator and am looking to mount the 58532A
on a roof-mounted mast to get better coverage (right now it's outside
a window). Would the presence of nearby (either on the mast or within
20m of the mast) HF (3.5-30MHz) , VHF (~145MHz), and UHF (~430MHz)
transmitters cause any issues? My transmit power is typically around
5-20W on HF with peaks up to 100W and 1-5W on VHF/UHF. The HF antenna
is a simple wire dipole, not a high-gain directional antenna.

Naturally, I'd like to avoid damaging my GPS antenna or any of the
downstream devices.

Since the 58532A is currently mounted relatively close to the
splitter, I'm using LMR100A coax (it's lossy, but the short lengths
mean it's not an issue; the window mount makes the thinness of the
cable important) but for the longer run from the mast I'd used LMR240
or LMR400 as needed. I use the same type of cable for the HF radio.
Those cables are well-shielded (braid-on-foil) with >90dB shielding
attenuation, so I don't think signal leakage from or ingress into the
cables will be a big deal.

The datasheet for the 58532A specifies the out-of-band signal
attenuation is around 60dB at +/- 50MHz.

Many thanks in advance for the help.

Cheers!
-Pete

-- 
Pete Stephenson


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