JohnE

those crystal mics have a great sound to them clean and crisp. man I miss those.

I can hit/talk through it from the VZ bridge. have not checked how far east I have to be to hit it on the ground though. I also have not put it in my control radio yet.

I have never seen anything Am/SSB on UHF in my yrs of doing this. but I live in a very small bubble in the radio world.

if the external alert jack is just a dry contact set up you could put a 555 timer circuit on it to drop it out in 2-3 minutes or let the repeater time out timer(TOT) drop it for you. the only problem w/that is your basically disabled until it drops out. use the headphone jack to supply the audio. I personally think the CAT is way over priced for doing what a WX radio does to interface w/repeater.

the mast is 30' w an 8' antenna on it, that was the "test" set up. I really don't remember how big the ladder was and it wasn't all the way up. my best guess is its about 70'. once I get in it I have a 100 foot tape measure I'm going to drop and see what it is.

looks like it will be a couple of more weeks before it gets back to full power. w/changes to this site there is a new 7' rack coming and the old cabinets are going to be removed freeing up quite a bit of floor space. I have to wait until school is completely out before this can be done though. looking at a full day or so of work to get it done.

Billy has said he can hit/hear it from his location on just the exciter. roughly 30 mi out. just an FYI

nah,I have better places to put the bodies.

some pics. better late than never http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/off%20grid%20site/DSCN0002_zps54a02268.jpg http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/off%20grid%20site/DSCN0005_zps7a11a0f2.jpg http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/off%20grid%20site/DSCN0001_zpsa9a3b95d.jpg http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/off%20grid%20site/DSCN0003_zps042c8c71.jpg

might be able to pull AC out to it w/o too much line loss. was at a job site talking w/some electricians and one posed an interesting idea............... step up to 480 then down to 120 therefore reducing how fat a wire I need to go as far as I do. must research this further, going to keep the batteries though. have to have a BU.

really? for 30'. this is going to clear you roof line by what 10-15 feet at the most. sorry I'm no help.

welcome to our world

575 new location map. 40W 8dB antenna, and for PG ERP ~290W http://i1105.photobucket.com/albums/h358/erscom/maps/57540W8dBd_zps2013e6df.jpg

some more particulars 25M 1/2" hard line w/an 8dBd antenna. running just the exciter at 10W. got my hands on another duplexer going to see if it has better insertion loss than the one I currently have. was never happy w/loses of it.

too close. what are you using for antenna's? the 805's are 20W radios, your going to need 60'-70' horizontal or 20' vertical separation. can you hear the machine inside? improvise an inside antenna and that should let you hear yourself. and happy anniversary.

question , are you holding the repeater not just "chunking "it. the second thing that comes to mind is how close is the radio your listening to to the radio you talking on. you could be getting near field desense.

its up and running at low power. will need some more time to get it up to snuff and that is not in the cards anytime soon.

let me know how it works.

boss man wants to move things around at the current site and that has lead to my moving it a few blocks away from where it is now "should" be a little better and new AVA4 1/2"hard line plus new antenna TBD. might use Laird or get a Comtelco not decided yet. ..

it "looks" right. the Kenwood cables I have are db25's wdb9 adapters. I have a USB for the some mobiles. If I saw this this morning I would have looked up the par t#'s for you from Kenwood. will look Monday if thats any help. you know for 14 bucks I'd go for it.

moisture in the cable will also create "noises" but will not show up on an SWR meter. I have seen it many times it doesn't take much. blocked condensation hole on an antenna will do it in very short order and "if" that migrates into the cable your only option is to replace them both. been there done that. if the receiver is tuned up wrong it will also create these noises. RSSI too low/squelch settings too low will have the same affect. have this w/Kenwood all the time. I have seen duplexers go bad and do this but that is pretty rare, unless it is poorly tuned. now if the transmitter is putting out junk this will wreak all sorts of havoc in you system and others miles away. rule of thumb is "if it doesn't sound right it probably isn't". as an example my 650 had a moisture problem last spring. it didn't sound right to me for a week or so, checked it w/Bird 43 wattmeter all looked fine. another week later it go worse. this time after putting the meter on it I went topside and opened everything up to inspect it. moisture in the connector and the cable. cut 6' off the cable to see if it was clean, it was. put new connector on it and changed the antenna. upon further inspection the fiberglass had become porous and that is how it got wet inside the cable, it migrated down internally. go figure.

https://forums.mygmrs.com/index.php/topic/66-rx-pre-amps/

did not have a chance to do anything this weekend on the site. on a related note came across a new to me antenna co. that we bought from last week. they seem to be well built and not too bad price wise. I may get one to put on my 575 just to see how well it performs against what I'm using now once an account is set up. have heard good thing from a couple of people about them. http://www.comtelcoantennas.com/ this http://www.comtelcoantennas.com/PDF/BS450XL6.PDF or this http://www.comtelcoantennas.com/PDF/BSL450XL6.PDF leaning towards the second one.

time to make a coffee can DF