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Swapped the wideband duplexer back in and did my test loop. Pretty much back to normal. I think yesterdays test was slightly better but not by much. Had trouble in my usual spots. But I had trouble in a reliable spot too. Looks like for now this duplexer is staying put.

Well the news is anything but exciting. Reception is markedly worse. I only had one spot in my loop that I was able to communicate through the repeater. The rest of them either kerchunked it or didn't register. Very disheartening. I thought this would be much better than the other duplexer and right now it's looking like it is reacting like it was when I first got the repeater. I can contact it with my 50 watt. And I have a guy 2 towns up that I was communicating with before with good clarity, R7 and now he's barely an R5. Lots of background noise and very low modulation. Worked but you had to concentrate to hear what he was saying and even then it was hard. Since tomorrow is a bust for things to do at work I'm going to swap out the duplexer tonight and make the rounds again. It's always possible it's atmospheric and not the single channel duplexer. Or maybe it just can't handle the 65 watts in like the 2nd one they sent me. Either way it's getting swapped out for now. Thank you very much for the effort Marc

Oh it absolutely was. Noticeably so. I wasn't able to contact the repeater from my area with the original duplexer and when they sent me the newer one I was able to connect somewhat reliably. Still pretty iffy and right on the fringe. But communication was acceptable.

Its very possible that the wider configuration of the original notch was reducing power output more than the rated <‐1dB. 70w minus 1dB is about 55w. -2dB would be 44w. Figure the meter probably isn't perfectly calibrated, you probably had -2dB of insertion loss with the wider notch, and -1dB with the more narrow notch. The receive side was/is probably the same. However, -2dB vs -1dB is not really noticeable to the user, even though its measurable. It sounds like the second duplexer they sent you was tuned much, much better that the one that came inside the repeater.

I still go outside during sever weather so I can make accurate reports to the Sky Warn Net. But I sure am not going to go chasing any storms. And I will head for cover if I see a tornado heading my way.

If it gets you the distance and clarity you want, it's a good setup. "Good enough" is a valid concept.

There may even be one or more on this forum who has participated in it. A long time ago. When I was they were younger and more reckless.

Good information. See? I knew somebody here could answer that question.

There's a company that makes custom lengths of 7/8" heliax to order. Their prices seem pretty reasonable when I looked, but might still break your budget. I'd go with the best cable you can get for the main run. Use whatever connectors the antenna uses (no adapters at the antenna end). Then a lightning protector. Then 400 ultraflex to get into the house and to a base station, or a single adapter to a skinny coax with the matching ultraflex on one end and SMA-F (usually) to connect to a hand-held being used as a base station. My preference for outdoor connectors (and in general, actually) is N connectors. I wrap the completed, tested connector assembly in Scotch 88 electrical tape and then slide one of the heat-shrink tubes from a local Home Depot/etc. underground splice kit onto it and shrink it. That makes it watertight (you don't want water getting into your nice new cable). The heat shrink tubing and hot melt glue inside it will make a watertight seal, and the electrical tape means the connectors won't get gunked up with glue if you ever have to go into that connection again. This way you can upgrade your antenna at a later time without worrying about your cabling robbing power. If you use a commercial installer (not on your budget) you should get a PDF or hardcopy of an SWR sweep across your intended working range. Otherwise you can probably find someone with a SW-102 or similar to give you power and SWR readings. At the other end of the spectrum (pun intended) you can go all-out. My plan is 7/8" heliax from the lightning protector to a 20' mast on the roof, then a DB420-B (if the price ever becomes sane again - prices have tripled and Andrew is quoting 4-5 month lead time) antenna . The ground field is eight 8' long ground rods 16' apart connected with a continuous length of #4 copper and bonded to the power entrance. From the lighting protector to the repeater inside the house, I'll be using 400-class ultraflex. If you were in the NYC area, I'd give you a short reel of LMR600 - I end up with anywhere from 50' to a few hundred feet I can't use, on giant (table-size) reels. This is stuff left over from other RF work where LMR600 is preferable. That stuff is so thick and stiff that I made a walking stick out of an N connector on a length of LMR600. It was the end of the day and a storm was rolling in, so I just put connectors on the too-long cables to connect them to the protector bank. 2 days later I came back and cut the lengths down to the proper size, hence the leftover.

Ya, I have one of those 97S repeaters. More of a bug out repeater.

Sounds good LeoG. I fear that Retevis made a mistake when they upped the TX power. They either didn't have enough isolation in the duplexer, or choose to allow more insertion loss to get a high isolation. Either way is makes for poorer RX sens. I hope I'd dead wrong though and it's good. According to the spec sheet, the 97S is 0.20uV, which comes out to -121dBm. Many years ago when I worked on a project that had a full duplex radio I modified it (in a kludgy way) with a 1dB NF preamp and custom bandpass filter to protect the low NF preamp. The resultant RX sensitivity was about -123dBm, which is as low as you can go in the real world on a 25KHz channel BW. So the -121 of the RT97S is pretty darn good for a "mere" consumer grade repeater.

One fellow regularly hits 200 miles. Then again he is a legend in his own mind.

Well I was wondering about that but never asked the question. Since the wideband was tuned flat(ish) I was wondering if it might restrict the power. Just another compromise when doing this type of system I guess. Was pretty shocked to see 70 watts out of the transmitter. Thought maybe 60 at the most. Hopefully the receive will give me the same boost as the transmit.

I'm sorry you're experiencing the grief that you are, in your area. I Wish I could share some of the diversity of the folks here. Most of our Hams are discussing future antenna projects, current projects, ways to help the younger crowd get started with their stations, and even our local Gmrs guys are discussing antennas, tech projects and ways to improve their hobby ! A growing number of our hams are becoming licensed for Gmrs, and vice versa, with our Gmrs crowd seeking out classes for their Tech and General licenses. Most behave and conduct themselves as adults, and try to help fellow operators.

My local club is blessed that the local radio station has allowed us to put our repeaters at their tower sight. The reasons they are doing this is the fact that we are a non profit organization so its a tax write off for the radio station. The other is the owner supports amateur radio. We still have to have a licensed and bonded person to climb the tower to do any maintenance and we have to pay for our portion of the electric bill each month. We also had to put our own building up (shed) to hold all of our equipment. We are also responsible for any and all maintenance of our equipment to include antennas, coax, etc. Again we are very fortunate that the radio station allows us to use their tower free of charge. There is a real good chance that we will have to move all of our stuff if the radio station ever sells. As mentioned, finding an abandoned tower is not going to happen. They all belong to someone. Finding a tower owner that will let you use a tower for free is not very likely to happen either. Then there is the cost of antennas, coax, repeaters, other associated parts and supplies that will be needed. I sure would not bother installing a Midland or Retevis repeater on a commercial tower. Coax is another story. If the tower has any height then you are looking at more than 100 feet of coax which means you are going to want to use 7/8" or larger Heliax cable. And don't bother trying to install consumer grade antennas on a tower. As good as Comet and other brands are for consumer use at home, they will never hold up installed up high on a commercial tower. You will be paying someone to climb the tower to replace the antennas every few years. Commercial repeater antennas are not cheap.

I'm excited to hear how it goes. An additional 8w out was unexpected, but a plus, for sure.

Didn't you know that watching tornadoes is an outdoors spectator sport here in the midwest?

OK Boyz and Girlz, here we go. I opened up the Btech RPT50 repeater to remove the original wideband duplexer First thing I did was check the output wattage from the transmitter. The power supply was set at 13.8 volts and it was putting out 71 watts into the duplexer. Had 42 watts out of the duplexer. And not the best SWR on my 50 ohm dummy load. Right at the edge of spec. I turned the voltage down to about 11.5 volts and it showed about 65 watts out. Probably the lowest I can get it. Then I swapped the original wideband duplexer for the one that Marc so graciously tune to a single frequency for me (600). I relabeled it so some future person doesn't think it's wideband. I should probably strip the other frequencies out of the channel selection also. And I tested it and got about 48 watts from it. I said what the heck and boosted the voltage a bit and got it to put out 50 watts. I haven't put it back into service yet, soon. And testing won't be done until it cools off from the 98ºF it currently is. Says it's going to be low 70s tonight. Probably be to excited to test things at midnight, so likely around 10 or so I walk my route. Of course I'll key it up on the way home, at home on the base and try an HT from inside the air conditioned house. LOL Most of the duplexers I looked at said "40-80 watts (50 watts)" so hopefully I don't melt this one. The replacement was accepting the 71 watts without blinking and the original had the power supply set for 12.5 volts which is about 67 watts into the duplexer.

The attached file is an example I did to do a hex edit hack on a Kenwood NX-411 code plug to get on the Ham 33cm band. The radio programming software wouldn't allow the entry of the frequencies. How to Hex edit Kenwood code plugs - 20241011.pdf

You need to get a windows hex editor. Then you can load in the binary file and edit the specific memory location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_editor https://www.av-rd.com/knowhow/data/hexedit_archivists-1.html

Good edit!

Reminds me of shooting at the range. There are some long-range rifle shooters who consider clays (trap/skeet/sporting clays) to be beneath them. "I shoot at 1,000 yards. What's a long clay shot, 50 yards? Pfft. Too easy." I'd love to get him on the skeet range with a ringer, a 14 year-old girl who recently hit 197 out of 200 at a national tournament.

Well I am actually going to find that out tonight. I have a Btech 50w repeater and it has a wideband duplexer in it and soon I will be changing that out for a single channel tuned duplexer. The receive should be more sensitive. The receiver will be the same, but the desense should be much less with the >-85db vs the >-45db of the wideband duplexer

True. Well OK, but the RX sensitivity at the antenna connector is what matters. Do we know anything about how good or not that is? ps: yes IM, Adjacent Channel etc matter in some installations too