Wouxun KG1000G Plus Interconnected As A Repeater Package

[nokones]

I'm sure there are several of you that have interconnected two KG1000G Plus radio together to make it into a repeater. I'm curious what where your results after you did this? Did you experience any desense whereas, you were only able to communicate no more than 3/4 of mile away with a portable radio? At first, I was ready to blame the duplexer. I asked a Club member for some help and he brought his Maxon radios over and there was a significant performance improvement in the distance using the same duplexer and the same newly made cables.

So, based on our testing you would think that the problem was not with the duplexer but, with the radios. I even swap the transmit and receive functions between the two radios and the problem still existed.

Has anyone else experience similar results with the KG1000G Plus radios being used as a repeater?

I would like to hear from anyone that have had similar problems with their KG1000G Plus repeating radios.

[OffRoaderX]

When I first set up my 2 KG1000s as a repeater i had significant desense limiting my fars.  But after separating the radios by several feet and putting one of the radios in a vented metal box, I was able to get a 20+ mile range.. I am high-up on a hill though so your fars may vary.

[nokones]

Yes, the duplexer was tuned to the operating frequency pair. All the cables were checked and double shield low loss RG-8X and the cable run between the antenna and duplexer is LMR400.

[nokones]

1 minute ago, OffRoaderX said:

When I first set up my 2 KG1000s as a repeater i had significant desense limiting my fars.  But after separating the radios by several feet and putting one of the radios in a vented metal box, I was able to get a 20+ mile range.. I am high-up on a hill though so your fars may vary.

I did separate the radios maybe about 5 feet between them at the most. My friend had his Maxons sitting on top of each other for the Test Comparison and they appeared to be working fine.

The KG1000G Plus RF output power was about 37 watts into the duplexer and about high 20s to low 30s coming out of the duplexer, which varied at times. I was drawing between 10+ amps to about 12 amps with 14.1 volts when the two radios were in the repeat mode. In my opinion I think the KG1000G Plus radios are a poor repeater setup.

[nokones]

I'm low level in old people country that is essentially a flat terrain.

[gortex2]

CCR radio with poor shielding. A quality LMR radio would not do that. There is a reason many commercial repeaters are not cheap. Filtering and shielding in repeaters is very important. You could have grabbed a GR1225 or VXR7000 repeater cheaper that you spent on the 2 mobiles. 

[nokones]

1 hour ago, gortex2 said:

CCR radio with poor shielding. A quality LMR radio would not do that. There is a reason many commercial repeaters are not cheap. Filtering and shielding in repeaters is very important. You could have grabbed a GR1225 or VXR7000 repeater cheaper that you spent on the 2 mobiles. 

You are correct and it is a lesson learned on my part.  I found a brand new Vertex EVX R70 repeater still in the box $700 that I've been eyeing for a couple days and I may pull the plug and get it, and of course sell the two Wouxun radios.

[WRVZ612]

On 2/17/2023 at 9:03 PM, OffRoaderX said:

When I first set up my 2 KG1000s as a repeater i had significant desense limiting my fars.  But after separating the radios by several feet and putting one of the radios in a vented metal box, I was able to get a 20+ mile range.. I am high-up on a hill though so your fars may vary.

I watched your YouTubes on building your repeater. In the end, did you finally go with a working duplexer, or with the two separate antennas?

[WRUE951]

i had a KG1000 repeater set up and was getting roughly 45 miles talking into 9 Mile Canyon, however i could not reach a friend in Lone Pine.   Last Dec i switched the KG1000's out with a pair of Maxon 8402A Radios and have no problem hitting a friend in Long Pine, 85 miles north of me..   The Maxon's are 40W radios but for some reason they talk a lot better than the KG1000..  I'm using a Hustler G6-450-3 Antenna with LMR400 45' run antenna to duplexer.   BTW, The Maxon's are comparable in cost than the KG1000 and seem to be a lot better radio 

[nokones]

23 hours ago, WRVZ612 said:

I watched your YouTubes on building your repeater. In the end, did you finally go with a working duplexer, or with the two separate antennas?

If my memory serves me right, I believe he mentioned that he was using a duplexer. Also, in another video he described the antenna configuration he originally placed on the roof and than reconfigured to improve for better Fars and it only showed one antenna arrangement.

[Radioguy7268]

For less than the cost of 1 Wouxun radio, you could strap 2 CDM750 (or 1250) mobiles back-to-back and get 3 times better results.

 

[WRVZ612]

On 2/26/2023 at 9:34 AM, nokones said:

If my memory serves me right, I believe he mentioned that he was using a duplexer. Also, in another video he described the antenna configuration he originally placed on the roof and than reconfigured to improve for better Fars and it only showed one antenna arrangement.

That is exactly what I saw. I might have to go the duplexer route since two separate antennas on my house is not an option. It's interesting that the 40 watt maxons were better that the 50 watt KG1000's. Maybe just better stability and punch. I heard that many times on the old CB band.

[gortex2]

25 minutes ago, WRVZ612 said:

That is exactly what I saw. I might have to go the duplexer route since two separate antennas on my house is not an option. It's interesting that the 40 watt maxons were better that the 50 watt KG1000's. Maybe just better stability and punch. I heard that many times on the old CB band.

Most likely its the radio. Remember the KG1000 is a CCR mobile and does not have narrow filtering like a single band mobile radio. Thats why LMR radios tend to work better as they are designed for a certain frequency range and not a 100-500 mhz windown. 

[SteveShannon]

On 2/26/2023 at 7:34 AM, nokones said:

If my memory serves me right, I believe he mentioned that he was using a duplexer. Also, in another video he described the antenna configuration he originally placed on the roof and than reconfigured to improve for better Fars and it only showed one antenna arrangement.

He ended up replacing it with a real repeater:

https://youtu.be/0pRKQFuJJ9o

[nokones]

So did I.

I went with a Vertex Standard EVX R70-G7 which looks identical to a Motorola XPR8300. The performance of this repeater exceeds my expectation with great portable radio coverage throughout my "Old People Community".  I was driving around in my super zoomy kinda not-so-fast Golf Car with my Motorola XTS5000 portable radio sitting in my cup holder with the portable about two-feet off the ground using a speaker mic for my drive-around test and I was able to communicate through the repeater whereas, I was not able to do before with the CCR radios. A member of the GMRS Radio Club I am associated with helped me with the coverage test and he drove around with a portable and communicated within his vehicle through the repeater approx. 5-6 miles away. This evening I was able to communicate through the repeater with a portable about 7 or so miles away from inside of a vehicle.

My antenna is a Laird FG4605 5dB antenna and is approx. 25-30 feet to the tip and the terrain is essentially flat with single story houses and commercial buildings and gazillion Palm Trees throughout the community.

Today, I finished mounting the duplexer to a mounting board on the wall and built new short cables using RG-8X low-loss cable, with amphenol connectors from DX Engineering (sorry no affiliate link anywhere), between the repeater and the duplexer . The repeater receiver connector required a BNC connector and the transmitter connector required a "N" connector as did the duplexer requiring N's. I have a very short newly built pigtail cable between the duplexer output and the LMR400 cable to the antenna which is about 55-60 in length at the max. and equipped with a lightning arrestor grounded to the earth ground at the electrical panel.

I connected my Bird 43 in-line watt meter between the duplexer and the antenna and I measured 24-25 watts out of the duplexer and no movement on the meter for reflected with a 100 watt slug. I put in my 10 watt slug to measure the reflected and the needle moved slightly to maybe .2 watt. I decided to compare my MFJ Digital Meter and I measured a tad over 22 watts with .4 watt reflected and 1.25 to 1.3 VSWR.

Next will be conducting a radio coverage test with a 50 watt mobile using an unity-gain antenna to see what kind of "Fars" I can get throughout the West Valley area of Phoenix.

Besides being expensive, this radio stuff is kinda fun.  This hobby does keep me busy with all the ancillary mini-projects along with my car racing and doing a few "Old People Stuff" I wish I had more time in the day.

[whiteheadje]

On 2/17/2023 at 8:03 PM, OffRoaderX said:

When I first set up my 2 KG1000s as a repeater i had significant desense limiting my fars.  But after separating the radios by several feet and putting one of the radios in a vented metal box, I was able to get a 20+ mile range.. I am high-up on a hill though so your fars may vary.

Sir by separating them several feet, exactly how many feet are you talking about. I have the same setup and have mine separated by 16 feet and am still having the desense issue. 16 feet is the length of the data cable.

WROV365