Our club budgeted for a Kenwood 750 repeater to replace an RCA TAC-200 mobile repeater we have had in service for 15 years. Replacing it was deemed necessary since repair parts are no longer available.
I objected to this replacement from the start, wanting to put another GE Mastr II base station repeater in service to replace the RCA. I had no particular reason to not want the Kenwood repeater, but since the club operates another GE Mastr II base station repeater and our link radio is a GE Mastr II mobile with the final PA removed, I wanted to keep all the equipment the same, and I know that the GE equipment is reliable and performs well. My main detractors were convinced that a 15 year old repeater could not possibly work as well as a brand spanking new Kenwood 750. I had to disagree, saying that I thought the GE repeater would probably work better than the Kenwood in our particular application. We have a solar site, and the standby current draw of the GE with the audio amp disabled was far less than the standby current drawn by the Kenwood. The repeater sensitivity was also called into question as the Kenwood has better receiver specs than the GE. However the site has other radio equipment installed, and the site noise floor was not going to allow full use of the Kenwood sensitivity anyway. Long story short, I prevailed and we now have a GE Mastr II base station repeater with an in-band link installed with our two repeaters linked and operating as the club desired. The club also owns a GE Mastr II mobile which gives us a spare module for every part in the system except for the continuous duty PAs for both repeaters. The squelch mod has been performed on both repeaters giving slow squelch close for weak signals to combat picket fence noise, but allowing a snappy squelch closure for stronger signals without using audio delay modules. I firmly believe that the money allocated for the repeater was better spent buying a nice outdoor cabinet and new DB-224E antenna, and the $200 GE outperforms the Kenwood 750. For commercial applications I can see where the Kenwood provides a fast set-up and easy programming for frequency and features, where these factors are critical, but for amateur use where more time is available an older crystal controlled repeater can easily outperform the newer repeaters. If you are interested in this build, the progress was documented here: http://sbarcnm.org/forum/index.php?topic=108.0 The new repeater and link has now been in service for several months, and is performing very well. 73 - Jim W5ZIT --- On Fri, 11/21/08, John Transue <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: John Transue <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Good Repeaters for UHF Ham Band To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 9:19 AM My ham radio club is ready to replace our 440 repeater. I have read the spec/data sheets on the Icom IC FR-4000 and the Kenwood TKR-850. Here are my questions: Are these among the best modern repeaters available? Is one or the other superior? Is there a different repeater you would prefer or recommend? What good/bad experience have you had with the Icom or Kenwood (or with related products)? Are there specific brands or models to avoid? Information that might be relevant: The repeater will be in a standard 19-inch rack mount cabinet. It will be inside, not exposed to the elements. It can be used with or without a power amplifier (5W in, 90W out). I would like the power out to be near the 90W. The frequency pair has 5MHz separation. TX is on 448.375MHz; RX on 443.375MHz. The duplexer is a Motorola T1504A I would appreciate the benefit of your experience. Thanks. John Transue, Trustee Vienna Wireless Society Vienna, VA _._,___
