At 2/13/2007 08:22 AM, you wrote: >Thanks for your input, I was hoping to hear from someone who had >experience with this kind of rig. I've been trying the vertical >antenna separation tactic, which *in theory* puts the antennas in each >others' nulls, but I think the reality is that there's enough pattern >distortion, signal reflection, etc to make it unworkable. I just was >looking for a sanity check before spending the bucks on the duplexer. > >Brian >K9JVA
I agree with using a duplexer as opposed to split antennas. As Adam pointed out in a previous posting (at least in the order I'm getting them from Yahoo), sufficient vertical separation in a portable operation is difficult, & while with enough coax or split sites you may be able to get enough horizontal separation, you'll need a lot more real estate to pull it off, or will need to use directional antennas so as to get a null between the two. I did this a long time ago on one of my first repeaters, a 2 meter system using a tube-type radio (clean TX, reasonable RX dynamic range), 1 pass cavity & a directional antenna & omni. The problem was I only had usable coverage in the direction the beam was pointing (~90 degrees away from the omni), plus I was constantly tuning the TX (about once every week or two) to keep the noise out of the RX. Using a duplexer will give you the maximum possible coverage from your limited antenna height & space. Bob NO6B
