Sal M. Onella said the following on 6/1/2011 10:37 PM:
On Jun 1, 2:48 pm, 'Captain' Kirk
wrote:
'Captain' Kirk DeHaan said the following on 5/22/2011 11:04 AM:

I'm living in a wooded area and am trying to hit our club repeater
reliably. It's cloudy now so I'm and getting a bit of ducting but I have
a lot of trees, mostly poplars, in the direct path. I would have a line
of sight if not for the trees as I'm up enough in altitude. I can cut
the trees, they're mine, but finding the right ones is difficult and i
don't want to waste the whole grove.

I go from keying the repeater with no intelligible signal to not being
able to hit it. Today I actually have an S meter reading due to the
clouds. I am currently using a J-pole and will put up a Yagi soon but
wonder if NVIS would work on 2m? I have only seen references to it being
applied in HF.

'Captain' Kirk DeHaan
N6SXR

I am still working on finding where the problem is. I pulled the J-pole
down and checked the resistance of the separate connections. I didn't
want to pull it apart if not necessary. Everything showed 0.0 to 0.1
ohms. Seems fine to me. I then cleaned the connector as throughly as
possible using emory cloth inside and dremeled the outside with a fine
wire brush. There was a small amount of oxidation and it appeared much
cleaner and brighter after. I also straightened the two elements but
they were not really that bent. You had to look down the long axis to
see any deviation. They are as straight as they are going to get but I
can't believe that would make much difference.

I don't think anybody asked you:

How much power are you putting out?

How well do you hear the repeater; are there times when it fades below
squelch while you're listening to other people?

(No, I don't have a 2m PA that I'm trying to unload.)

Sal

Sal,

My TM-721A is putting out 35 watts. At least that is the spec. The
repeater is always scratchy and barely readable. I've only had one time
when it even showed up on the S meter. That was low clouds so I assume
it was cloud bounce.

--
'Captain' Kirk DeHaan
N6SXR

"Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life here"