Bridgecom repeater?

In the commercial realm, 20dB of quieting is not good enough. All of the signals have to be near "full quieting" or they are annoying! Certainly for hams 20dB of quieting should be good enough for communications without a lot of repeats, but it is not considered a "good" signal, it would be "adequate".

The term "full quieting" is often misused. I have heard stations through a repeater that were maybe 20dB quieted, and other stations will tell them they are "full quieting". The ones I like are the guys who say, "You're full quieting, only about 10% noise."

 

Along with the squelch problem, I've concluded that the Bridgecom has an internal isolation problem between tx and rx causing desence. This is also chopping the repeater rx out. PUT the old mastrII back in, no desence....might have been a mistake to upgrade to bridgecom. ...

 

Squelch can be a PITA. When someone is picket fencing on FM, you need one that will still clamp down, but during temp drop outs stay loose. Lots of older repeaters have this, no ones not so much. We stuck a SC-50 squelch board from repeater builder with the micor chip in our club Yaesu DR1x and it really transformed the squelch. You know a squelch is good when you don't think about it because it works right. That's what the SC-50 will get you.



http://www.repeater-builder.com/micor/micor-bi-level-squelch-theory.html

 

Basically the repeater is too sensitive and picking up a signal really too weak for communications. OR the PL code is dropping into the receiver. Try a lower PL like 100 or lower and do a test.

 

What duplexers and coax type are you using ?

What type of Antenna ?

 

The duplexer is a bird tx/rx
28-37-02A
With rg-142 coax.
The antenna is a comm scope db-224e using 1/2" heliax.....

 

There is actual desence. I can monitor the receiver and then key the repeater and hear the rx get noisy. The signal does pop in and out with mobile flutter. I didn't think about the tone dropping but will program temporarily with no tone and see if that hrlepls...tnx

 

Did you touch-up the duplexer when connected to the antenna at the repeater site ? That is the best for optimization, And should be done.

Do you have desence when substituting the antenna with a dummy load ? That should give a clue if the problem is internal to the Bridgecom.

Good Luck.

 

Yes, the desence is the same with the antenna and with the dummy load. I've tried everything suggested here, on repeater-builder, and Google articles for nearly two months to no avail. No help from tech support, I've called them on three specific problems and their answer was
" make a video of the problem and send it to us" Stupid to say the least. The Bridgecom has a harsh, stonewall squelch that drops very readable signals with any mobile flutter, it locks up and has to be reset often, it has very little selectivity and isolation. Maybe it could be used in a big city for 10 to 15 miles coverage, but here in the mountains of New York we need 50 to 75 miles coverage and had that with the MastrII. So, today is replaced the Bridgecom with our old MASTRII and no desence or squelch problems. The Bridgecom will maybe be used as a ten mile link radio for dmr, it's not up to being a serious wide coverage repeater....wa2nan

 

Hello! Here's an example of a very active BCR-50V covering the Atlanta, GA metro. The website allows you to listen to the audio traffic on the station as well as pictures of the antenna array, duplexer, and install. Contrary to the previous post, it has very wide area coverage. Pretty cool.

https://www.lanierlandarc.org/p/repeaters.html