With more Hams living in condos, on smaller lots and in antenna restricted areas, operating a remote HF station via the Internet is quickly gaining popularity.

While controlling a remote HF station is not new, with the advent of the Internet and VOIP technology, this has become a viable alternative to the “in city” antenna farm.

As more and more cities, counties and neighborhoods are enacting tower/antenna control ordinances/rules which make installing towers and other visible antennas more difficult if not impossible we hams are finding the continuing pursuit of our hobby in great jeopardy.

I have been doing HF remote for about a year using Broadband internet connections, remote desktop software (like GoToMyPC), Skyp VOIP and the Kenwood radio control programs. See http://www.ky6n.com/HiloQTH/index.html and http://www.ky6n.com/Fortuna%20Remote/index.html . While this system works, it’s expensive and the availability of remote antenna farm sites are limited by the availability of broadband connection availability.

The Challenge!

Find a way…the equipment and software to control a remote HF station using only a standard dial-up telephone line.

While using a regular dial-up telephone line may not be free, since it may entail a long distance call to the remote location, the cost of long distance calling is very cheap, less than $.03 per minute. Thus an hour only costs about $1.80. You can be “on the phone” for lots of hours for the price of the monthly broadband connections at two ends….but its not about saving money as much as its about having many more locations available for the remote site and its great antennas.

Many of the semi remote sites that will allow (or get away with) installation of a tower and beam(s)….just do not have the availability of broadband connections.

This system will, as with the Internet communications system, require a computer on each end….the remote computer at the transmitter (antenna) location and a computer at the home (antenna restricted) location.

The goal is to couple the computers together via the dial-up telephone line just as if they are in the same room and connected by a network cable or a broadband internet connection.

In this way the operator would be able to see and control, on the home computer screen, the display of the Radio Control program at the remote site, as if sitting at the computer at the remote site.

The transmit and receive audio needs to also sent back and forth over the same dial-up line.

This can be done quite easily using two telephone lines, one for audio and one for radio control, but now the price is going up again.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this using just one regular dial-up telephone line?

Using dial-up internet connections at each end has been tried with no known success so far, since 45~50kb is just not enough speed to make a workable system. This would simplify the entire process of using one line if the slow speeds were not a factor….does anyone have such a system working?

We can have great phone conversations over dial-up lines….now we just need a way to “float” non audible control signals on the same line…..

I will post the best responses on my web site and if this discussion warrants an ongoing newsgroup site, I’m sure we will find a spot on the internet to exchange ideas.