Hello All, I am looking to rebuild a 70cm repeater with an output within the ham band. We currently have a non-tunable fiberglass comercial band antenna wich is giving us a SWR of about 2:1. The first piece of advice we are looking for is recomendations for replacing the antena. There are some conciderations to go with this. Since it is a privately owned repeater it is in a back yard and not mounted very high due to lack of an antenna tower or space to put one up on the property. The antenna will be mounted at about 20 feet from ground level and we are looking to maximize coverage area so we are looking at high gain antennas such as the Diamond F718 which would be a step up as it would lower our SWR. What are your thoughts with this antenna or recomendations on other high gain antennas for the 70cm band?
Also, we are looking to replace the repeater itself. Right now we have an old Kenwood business band repeater that has been modified to work in the ham band but it is becoming more unstable as time progresses. We want to keep the equipment as back up and would like to look into a new system. We want something that is computer programable if possible. It also should work with an external controller as we are using a CAT-1000 with an attached weather station and CAT weather radio reciever. Right now we are coordinated at 25 watts output but would like to have a repeater that could run 50 watts continuous. Also, we would like to stay away from D-STAR simply because of personal preferance. Any suggestions or reccomendations for the repeater unit? Thanks for your help! Andrew KB8UPB
