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Reviews For: Array Solutions Band Master 4

Category: Antenna Switching, Phasing, Controllers

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Review Summary For : Array Solutions Band Master 4
Reviews: 2MSRP: 229.00
Description:
Small but Powerful, this Band Decoder has more features than any other Band decoder made and it costs less than the closest competitor.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/bandmaster4.htm
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0024.5
W9RPM Rating: 2015-12-29
Great product and support Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Works FB. Had a challenge getting things to work and Jay was very helpful with everything.
NK7J Rating: 2015-02-18
Great Product, Terrible Documentation Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I use the Shacklan system developed by K7MI for all my antenna switching now. I have the 4 square controllers, the relay drivers and now this Band Decoder. Its a pretty ingenious little box that also acts as a USB to RS-232 converter to directly control your radio through it. When connected properly it allows you to automatically switch antennas with a band change. One little snag I hit when I connected it to my Kenwood TS-590 and AClog software, you tell AClog (or whatever logging software you use) to use the virtual com port that is now assigned to the Band Master (your radio just plugs into the RS-232 9 Pin on the back of the band master). Works great right until you try and use the shacklan control center software that wants to use that same com port. Conflict. Easy way I found around it was to plug in a 2nd USB cable to the relay driver and have the control center software talk to it.
No where in the instructions (what little there are) does it explain how to set this up when using more shacklan devices or how to use it with logging software AND control center.
It works as it should now and makes everything super easy on antenna switching.
Larry makes a great product but the documentation is sadly lacking. For instance the table of contents of the manual says to refer to pages 14 through 16 for hookup, configuration and operations. Yet the manual does not even have anything past page 12.
I would give it 5 stars except for the lack of clearly understandable documentation. On the other hand Larry is a great help if you need it, he will go out of his way to make it work.