[Moon-net] Moontracking - PIC

[Bob McCormick W1QA]

We have been in the process of converting the NC1I 
70cm EME array to auto track using the Green Heron
Engineering RT-21 boxes (PIC based system) for AZ
and EL interfaced with F1ENH's software ... and 
Frank has just ordered a setup for the polarity 
rotation as well.

The RT-21 is a well thought out PIC based system
that is flexible enough to work with just about
anything we have thrown at it - including some ring
rotors and a Prosistel (that's turning the large
40m beam and other stuff on the big tower).

With the EME array we're driving a very large
prop pitch motor with aprox 6000:1 gear reduction
ratio.  A pulse counter keeps it accurate ...
and we've been able to easily get sub degree
tracking accuracies with the setup.

The RT-21 communicates with the computer via
either a EIA-232D serial interface or USB 
interface with serial port emulation.
We're using a small Windows program supplied
by Green Heron (GH Tracker) that communicates
with the F1EHN programme and the control boxes.

If there's interest I could consider putting
together a presentation on the NC1I setup 
for the Florence 2008 conference.

Bob W1QA