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.

i'm back on this project... i started building the custom cables to go between the two TK880 radios and the controller. Its slow going, i have everything on the bench and testing tonight. I'm taking photos and will post an update when i have something to share.

alright.... i got the new antenna up and some lmr400 cable.... sounds so much better... in the areas that are "line of sight" it sounds much louder, the voice over the noise that is, and further with more nose than ever before. However, in those shadow areas, still very bad, so it just goes to reinforce how important line of sight really is. I only did a quick test around the neighborhood. I think this setup is overkill for the range, that is- i can't get further because I'm literally down inside a shadow area from everyone else, so unless i find a new home, its very limited in use. however, the goal of reaching my ex wife's house and the schools so the kids could talk to me is a success! (each about 1 mile from home but over the hill on the other side of my hill) ht outside in the street from her place sounds very clean, no noise. so from the 2nd floor the kids will have to trouble. (this is all on the HT) my location sucks. i will be talking with the neighbors who live at the top of the hill, maybe one of them will be interested in letting me set up there, i'm sure i can cover the entire town if i can just go a few blocks up the hill to the top. so my repeater is on the air using my motorola gr1225. next up: finish building the portable repeater with my twin TK880 and custom controller and Chinese duplexer, and solar panel w battery backup. i really have no use for this, i's just for fun at this point. using a mobile mag mount, i'll be able to take it in my car, and drive around and play with locations to see how well i can repeat from hill tops and the such. there are hills everywhere. If i park at the top of the hill, leave my car with a mobile antenna, i can test again from those spots and see if that improves the signal and if i can reach further than the 1 mile i am getting now.

good stuff... glad to hear about no issues with 100ft lmr400, i have 75feet about to go up this week with my new antenna Comet CA-712EFC. I will see how that compares to the ed fong with 75 ft of RG8x .... hopefully a huge difference. then the KCT-19 cables.... yes! I have both of my 880 w cables ready to go... i have the Elektra 2000VZ controller ready to go.... i was going to build a custom cable to connect the two kct19 cables with the controller. that way, i can re use the controller for other radios later by just swapping out the custom cables. i have the batterys and solar pannel ready to go. i'm clearing room on the bench for this and hopefully over winter break, i will have it all set up. I plan to use the ed fong antenna as a "go box" antenna and i'll most likely build the tx880s into a water proof box. that's a challance also, keeping the radios cool inside a plastic box in the hot sun. i was thinking of using a large bolt and heat sink through the plastic box so that the heat can make its way outside without letting air through. like this: http://diyaudioprojects.com/Testeq/Dummy-Speaker-Load/VHS-95-Heat-Sink.jpg my setup will then consist of a base station or portable repeater, battery backup w solar power. I hope that i can set it up to run off grid if needed, at this point, for no other reason than as a cool project. Without a proper location, its very limited to less than 1 mile range due to my house being down inside a bowl.

i live in north jersey, i dont know of any local radio shops anymore, they all closed down, the ones i know of at least. if anyone knows of any in north jersey, let me know. i'd love to go look around at one.

I couldn't find any 1/2 inch hardline 50 to 60 feet ready to go with connectors without special ordering... while looking for hardline, i found a guy selling 75 feet of lmr400 for $50 so i just ordered that, figured it was good enough, it has N connectors on both ends... if i end up finding a real site for this repeater, i will special order the exact length of hardline, but for now, this is just going from my roof to my home office / shack. its a huge upgrade along with the new antenna and my range is limited by the fact that i'm inside a shadow.... i was only getting half a mile at most before with 75 ft of RG8x and Gary Fong antenna. i'm in a really bad area, so its more of a toy to play around with now, until i i get it up on a hilll top, it wont really be that useful beyond my neighborhood. i'd love to find a better home for it, but no one is interested, and there is no gmrs activity in my area, at all. which might be a good thing. i'm going to continue to test and learn as i go. i'll use my only gary fong antenna for my portable rig with the two TK-880 radios, then i'll prob sell it if i dont use it. basically the problem i have is that there is no one to talk to. doens't matter how good my antenna is or feedline, no one is there to talk with. maybe once its up and running, i will add it to the DB here, but its really not going to have much coverage since my house is down in a shadow area. if i ever find a better spot, that would make it much more useful.

Ah... I remember you talking about that before.

just noticed on amazon.... What is length measured in "Times" mean? I've never seen that. The company name is "Times" but why is that in the length? I assume its "feet" long. I tried google searching but keeps returning results for measuring time as in the clock, minutes, seconds, etc. http://www.amazon.com/Times-Microwave-LMR400-N-male---N-male50ft-Connector/dp/B000LVAKTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1447108689&sr=8-1&keywords=LMR400+50ft+N

how about 50 feet of RG213 ? I might be able to cut that distance in half and use 25 or 30 feet if i move the radio into my bedroom closet and feed the line a different path. http://www.amazon.com/MPD-Digital-rg213-50-pl259-Low-Loss-Connectors/dp/B004TBE17O/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1447099104&sr=1-2&keywords=RG213+50+feet after looking at the losses.... http://www.w4rp.com/ref/coax.html it seems LMR400 would be a lot better than RG213 ..... how about 30 or 40 feet of LMR600? - or 400.... I'm going to double check the length and order soon, anything is better then 75 feet of RG8X that I had.

okay, I'm looking around at what i need... looks like 25 to 50 feet in total i will need.... at that short length, is it really worth going heliax? Looks like i can get 50ft of LMR400 for around $80 with N connectors from http://www.amazon.com/Antenna-Times-Microwave-Transmission-Connectors/dp/B005DVAA9W/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1447097763&sr=8-4&keywords=LMR400. What is the trouble i will get into besides overall signal loss per 100 ft specs?

Comet CA-712EFC just arrived. i will try and get that set up on my roof for testing before winter. i will compare that to my Ed Fong antenna. However, i'm sure the cable will make a bigger difference. I'll go from 75ft of RG8x to maybe LMR400, i have to find the shortest path to the antenna by moving the radio upstairs, and then order some cable. This is def a winter project for me.

i'll program it in, but i dont know when i'll be close enough to try... i normally dont drive out that far east. but i'll give it a try.