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Due to the duplexer failing I decided over the winter months I would rebuild the Chain O' Lakes repeater in Ingleside IL. I had a spare 100W MTR2000 in the garage and decided this was going to be the heart of the new machine. Tuning it down to 50W would insure a solid 100% duty cycle and provide years of service. Due to past bad experiences with EBay duplexers I decided to purchase a new one and settled on an EMR 4 cavity pass / reject with a factory tune. Being a tinkerer that loves to build things I decided to dig out all the radio junk and see what I could come up with. The finished system will have an on board Bird 43 SWR / power meter and one of those micro mobile UHF radios for testing , monitoring and local use. To limit loss and interference I plumbed the entire system with ¼ helix superflex trimmed to critical lengths. Over the past several months I was having issues with another systme on .550 so come spring it will be moving to .725. I am still waiting on a few more items to finish this build and will keep this thread updated. http://cor3com.com/mygmrs/fr.jpg http://cor3com.com/mygmrs/emr.jpg This is the tower at my site, 150' with a DB420 on the top. http://cor3com.com/mygmrs/tower.jpg

Can't beat that MTR for solid performance, I run one with a Zetron and a ASP fiberglass antenna (800 model I think) 22 feet long on my 50 foot tower, which is on a hill 150 feet above average terrain. It has always provided good range. Before the MTR, I had 2 mobiles running, it was good, the MTR is the real deal though. For duplexing I run 2 receive cans, and one transmit can, stuff salvaged out of an old Motorola community repeater. Works great.

I have 7/8 on the tower, the run is 160' total, I had a 30W R100 at this site for about 5 months and it was usable 45 miles away.