Thanks guy for all of the answers. This has really given me something to think about.
Let me start by acknowledging all the obvious typos that have already been fixed (darn and I proofed that twice). Yes, the tower spacing is vertical (not horizontal), yes the tx/rx on the repeater is 443.3 and 448.3 (5 MHz split) Ok, now to fill in some of the blanks I left out. This is why the group is so coolÂ… things I thought were meaningless turned out to be important. The repeater power is 20 watts, the remote base is 10 watts. I can't really get much more vertical separation as the tower is only about 150 feet. Any lower for the remote base antenna and I can't make my link. The repeater is an Exec II. The remote base is a Kenwood TK-805 (just because I have a stack of them). The broadness of the TK-805 is part of the problem and this could all go away by switching to another Exec II for the remote base. For the splits, we have both (high TX and low TX) here in Maryland. The overall plan is to connect the new repeater with the remote base to an existing hub repeater on 449.225 TX and 444.225 RX. Skipp, I like the additional notch in the repeater duplexer trick. That alone may do it. I did the T-to-T thing with 2 and 4 band pass cans. The loss was in the 5-6 db range with 2 cans on each side. Not really worth it. If it were 2db per side, I would live with it. Milt, excellent info. I didn't want to dig into the radio to get to the T/R switch. If I have to do that much work, I'll just mod up another Exec II. The ascii drawings were cool. It looks like swapping in an Exec II for the remote base is making the best sense. That way, I can just put a separate band pass can on the TX and RX sides. If I need more, then notches tuned for the remote base and placed on the repeater's duplexer will take care of it. Thanks again for all of the input. Sometimes just talking it through helps a bunch. Dwayne Kincaid WD8OYG
