Steve

This is great news.

I can't believe it has been almost 4 years since I started this build but finally, everything is done, solar, batteries, controller, custom cables, duplexer, control radio, control yagi antenna, mast, coax, etc. half way installed, low power, antenna only at ground level, and works great. photos: https://goo.gl/photos/sVnU5TNpzWXnXqFm9 battery low voltage alarm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JL3mUtiUI Dtmf channel control gmrs repeater kenwood TK-880 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d06MtueMWM

and some photos https://goo.gl/photos/sVnU5TNpzWXnXqFm9

https://youtu.be/W0D5bmlRx-U I made some progress..... i'm keying into a dummy load for testing around the house... just need to finish mounting the controller and fans, and building out the rest of the custom cables and circuits for the utility power out alarm, and fan control relay. The idea is to have one box with everything contained that i can pull out and take home to service. Testing sounds great, no noise from power supply or tx into the controller. idle power is 15 watts draw on utility, and 40 watts on TX, and the RF tx is only around 10 watts out, im running the TX880 on low power, and i'm not sure how much power exactly, i killed my meter. But it runs very cool on TX low power. I need to get a new cross needle SWR and RF meter now.

I preferred the higher gain. Plus you can open the "C" antenna up and check joints and seal them if needed.

Lots of research and trial and error.

That is really excellent advice. Thanks. I'll do that. The middle already had become brittle. S

The antenna i'm using is: http://www.cometantenna.com/land-mobile/base-antennas/uhf-antennas/ CA-712EFC The Duplexer is just one of those $90 mobile ones i got from ebay, i am not sure if a $200 set of cans would make a difference if i'm running this at home, i understand that in a high RF site i would need / require it.

photos of the install so far.... screen shot windows 7

next up is getting it all assembled in a metal box to allow plenty of cooling, etc... then replacing my bad feedline and getting my antenna back up on the roof. if i can reach the school great, if not, then i have to find a new home for this repeater with more elevation. i'm going to use the good cable this time, maybe half inch and put the radio up closer to the antenna for a shorter feedline. we'll see.

with some help from facebook, i was able to get my repeater running 100% .... i had to move a 0 ohm jumper from R94 and install it at R24 to enable the Mic Input. Shown on page 20. that was a pain, because the jumper was just a surface mount thing. i had to pop it off with a knife then very carefully solder the smallest blob i could get on R24 but it worked. i'm on the air! I have my repeater controller working and tones and levels are all set. so far, the audio quality of the two dk880s is good, i tested levels to make sure simplex and through repeaters are the same, and you can't tell the difference now. I'm operating it through a dummy load on the bench. we'll see once i get it up on the air long range. my goal is to reach the school from home, but there is a small hill in the way. we'll see.

good news! it was the software setting.... i configured the output "com2" for PTT in the advanced settings tab of the programming software. a friend on facebook also mentioned it might be a software config when i posted this link on the GMRS group. so now it will TX correctly! but i have the audio in wrong because it wont pass audio, and no repeater beep so i'm sure its the wrong pin between controller and TX radio. it might be a week before i will have time to work on this again, but i will post as i make progress!

I ran into my first issue.... I wired everything up correctly as far as i know... the receive works fine, it receives the signal, triggers COR on the controller, i see the controller "receive" and then the LED for "Transmit" lights up as it should, but the radio is not transmitting. I see that the controller is in fact outputting the proper PTT active low (5v and 0v) on the pin going to the Kenwood. I even tied all grounds together, both radios, controllerand both connectors of the radios. I went PTT out on the repeater controller (pin 4) look at page 3 of the manual for controller: http://www.hamtronix.com.br/e_images/ele_man26_us.pdf to pin 8 on the kenwood TK-880's page 19 on the manual: http://www.repeater-builder.com/kenwood/pdfs/tk-880-svc-man-rev-e.pdf I'm using the KCT-19 cable. so the radio is not behaving correctly when getting the ptt active low on TX. I wonder if there is a software setting. my next step is to load up the software and look for a setting to "allow tx via accessory cable" or something like that. does anyone else have any ideas? has anyone else been able to get a Kenwood TK-880 to tx? one other thing i can try is manually trying some other inputs on the kenwood.

thanks, adding to my notes, i will check into them later. do they have a storefront? I'd love to find a local place where i can get parts and older commercial gear and service. i found a great place in CA but shipping is a pain.