| N7ZM |
Rating:      |
2019-09-26 | |
| Great switcher |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I bought this RCS-8V unit in early 1996 before MFJ took over and Ameritron was Ameritron. It is mounted outside and this is snow country in Carson City, NV. It has never failed and over years I just burnished cleaned the open frame relays twice. Its a great unit considering the alternative higher price ones. I run my Alpha Amp 1500 Watts through it with no problems.
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Earlier 5-star review posted by N7ZM on 2016-05-07
Bought mine in 1996 and it still performs great. Only maintenace I have done in these 20 years is open it and use some detox to clean inside. I set mine up when off to short to ground. |
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| KX2T |
Rating:      |
2019-09-26 | |
| Only 5 Positions but Isolation is Great! |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| Threw many years I have use most all of the Ameritron remote antenna switch boxes, the RCS10 the RCS4 and finally the RCS8V, all I can say is what was I waiting for, as long as MFJ didn't screw up the soldering this switch is a steal for the under $200 price tag. Yes you must run a six conductor cable but cat5E can be used, isolation between port is very close to 70db which is were the $400 to $700 switches run and it will handle decent power, no its not a 10Kw switch but I don't see any reason that 1500w would do any harm and yes its got old school relays so you can troubleshoot and be able to work on it. I did have the RCS10 and RCS4, they were good but the isolation on this switch blows those two away. Best bang for the buck in remote switching! |
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| W5ZZT |
Rating:   |
2019-06-09 | |
| OK, but needs repair before use |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought my RCS-8V to switch radio in the shack. I now have 3 rigs and my old switch would only handle 2 radios.
The first thing you need to have to do is open the outside box (inside in my case) to install the cable that connects to the controller. I took a quick look to see how well it was built. This box will switch up to 5 radios or antennas. The first thing I saw was on 3 of the relays the contacts were barely touching. Since I was using it to switch rigs it would probably fo OK but I just couldn't leave it that way. These are open frame relays and it looked as if the frame had been bent up leaving the contacts further up that they should be and one barely was making contact. Not good considering it's rated at 5KW.
So it took me about an hour to bend the frame back in place so they were back in alignment. Then I had to make some adjustments to get the space correct between the contacts when opened or closed.
Once repaired the switch works fine for the 100 watts coming from the rigs. If I was going to put this outside (It's intended use) I would look for another alternative. |
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| KM4NYI |
Rating:     |
2018-12-30 | |
| Works as advertised |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Picked this up at an estate sale, and installed it to switch my wire HF antennas. It works flawlessly, was easy to install, had no effect on SWR, and makes switching between my antennas easy. |
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| K1VCT |
Rating:      |
2018-11-30 | |
| Does the job well |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Maybe not too typical, but I'm sure other folks have their own similar situation. I'm not a powerhouse station by any means. I have two antennas, a Hustler vertical, and a "random" wire, only 72 feet long. I can work 75/80m through 10m. I'm sure I'll cobble something else up one day.
The feed wire runs from the shack which adjoins a large flat roof garage. But, to keep things both neat and out of sight to most (complaining) folks, the wire runs through the garage, over the back eve, and then onto the top of the flat roof.
The RCS-8V relay box is mounted inside, at the spot where the wires run out to their respective antennas, and of course the "control" box is on the desk in the shack.
The RCS-8V works as it should, and as they advertise. It has not changed the SWR that I can tell with the instruments that I have (RigExpert AA 54, and other various SWR meters). It has not changed the tuning of either antenna, nor the settings of the transmatch or amplifier.
A few notes of interest:
1. The relay box is made to mount on a pole. The design is not the very best, but workable. Ameritron (MFJ) was trying to make a decent cover that was more or less resistant to rain of the non-blowing, fairly vertical type of precipitation. Problem is, the "lip" on the cover will interfere with any flat mounting, or mounting at any spot except the very top of a pole. Washers can space things for pole mounting (you'll need six 1/4 inch fender washers). For flat mounting, in my case, I just used a piece of scrap wood behind the mounting surface to allow space for the lip. Not a deal breaker, but... you'll need to be at least a little creative in respect to mounting.
2. The coaxial connectors are riveted to the plate of the relay box and soldered to the circuit board. If you ever need to repair the board, say repair a blown trace, or just remove it to clean any infestation or corrosion... you'll have to desolder all six relays. That shouldn't be too hard, but will be a little bit of time consunming work.
3. Mine didn't have any drain hole for condensation or errant ingress of water. You might want to put one in, maybe mount the relay box at an angle so the drain will be effective. If the control box floods, you're pretty much SOL for the whole shack... so don't worry about that unit :)
4. You can usually get the relay box by itself, for just over half price if you shop around. The creative sort of person could, wire up their own control box very easily, just 12vDC through a rotary switch, easy to do. And, the very clever could wire two relay boxes from one control unit, if you really had some mega antenna farm
5. The LED lamps on the control box could be replaced easily with colored and/or flashing units for quick id in a darkened shack.
So, why the 5 rating, and not less? Because the unit is simple, and it works. Ameritron did mount things in the relay box to withstand at least a little bit of weather. As a whole, my unit was built perfectly, no cold joints, no solder splatter or globs. The items of interest I pointed out are some of what make Amateur Radio a hobby, a hands on hobby at that. I don't mind a little tinkering, getting an understanding of how and why things work, and adding my own finishing touches. If you want out of the box "perfect for any and all uses" products, this ain't it. But, the unit is solid, and can be very easily made to work in a whole lot of situations.
And that's that!
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| LA4UOA |
Rating:   |
2018-06-07 | |
| not the best |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Mine lasted 8 years, but than switch in the controller stopped working, put in a Russian high quality switch, and now working again.
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| W9HH |
Rating:     |
2018-02-21 | |
| OK - Remote Coax Switch |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I bought one of these after my home brew remote switch was obliterated by a direct hit. Anyway, I purchased the RCS-8V as a replacement and it and seems to function as you would expect it to. On the other hand, it's not exactly perfect. I need to mention the fact that the mounting clamp supplied with my unit was way to big for for a Rohn 25 tower leg. Isn't that where most of us would put it? so, I ended up using parts from my junk box to mount it. One last thing - The price is a little high for what this thing is and as usual the workmanship and QC leave a bit to be desired.
W9HH
Steve |
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| W0BKR |
Rating:  |
2016-11-26 | |
| Poor Quality - No QC/QA |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Bought a new one, and the wall wart (mine was DC powered) and wall wart is dead as a door nail. Once I located another wall wart, 1 position on the relay box didn't work. Doesn't MFJ check any of this crap before the box it up????
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| W5KVA |
Rating:   |
2016-05-12 | |
| 2 |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| In summary, Ameritron is willing to repair (not replace) the control unit IF I send it in to them, to be fair this a nice gesture seeing that the unit is out of warranty after sitting NIB on the shelf at my QTH for the last three years. Bottom line...MFJ has always lived up to their policy of repairing their poor quality control in-warranty products, but who in their right mind wants to be a continuous QC beta tester for them without being compensated? I personally have experienced 85% of their equipment to be bad out of the box. See some of my Cushcraft R8 reviews where two new antennas were bad out of the box, two MFJ-1124 DC power strips both bad out of the box (which I repaired myself) and some other NIB MFJ stuff. Back to this RCS-8V controller, I'm undecided whether I'll send it in or just repair it myself, either way, it takes time and time is money and so I remain gun-shy on purchasing any more equipment from under the roof of MFJ. |
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| KX2S |
Rating:      |
2016-05-07 | |
| Ten Years and Still Working |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Not sure what went wrong with the previous post.
I have had mine on the tower for over 10 years.
Never had one problem with it. Feeds a 15 Meter and a 20 Meter monobander.
Also feeds my inverted vee plus 10 meter rotatable dipole.
Allows me to run one coax from the shack to the tower plus the 6 wire control line.
Just select my antenna and i'm off and running. Handles a KW all day long and into the evening! |
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