Picked up a vertex VXR 7000, and a Celwave 6 cavity duplexer. (VHF) Using Celwave pd-220 3a, with 25 feet lmr.
We have spent hours tuning the duplexer, and find that it makes the system deaf. 1 watt out gives 10 miles coverage simplex, and when using dual antennas with the 3+ mhz bandspread the repeater works, but since the antennas are in line with each other the results are not good. Using an HT to generate and notch the signals, (as well as a power meter and a swr meter) all looks good until hooked up and its deaf. A user a half mile away can barely hold the repeater on an ht at 5 watts. I fully understand that there is attenuation inherent in duplexers, but this is way too much. freq pair is 4 mhz split, antenna system and cabling is excellent, rx and tx on the repeater is great, duplexer is in excellent shape. Anyone have any ideas? Are our crude methods of tuning the duplexer too crude? we tune the high to pass the high and notch the low (and vice versa on low side) but the duplexer seems to attenuate much more than expected. Thanks in Advance
