So a friend of mine for a quantar on vhf. Read the repeater saved the original file. Sitting on 155 something and was set up as p25. that’s what we wanted so hit validate to make sure all the settings were good it passed. so we wrote the frequency and wrote to it. Somewhere it failed and now we can’t read or write to the machine. What do we do?

I spent a lot of time digging into the update of changing a DB-224-A to the DB-224-E, setting it up for the 2M band, mostly on this group. The thing that I did a bit differently was not only extending the harness and mast, but I also extended all 4 of the loops to get them from 34" to 37". I cut some pieces of 1/2" aluminum (4 pieces for each loop, 1.5") and used some aluminum brazing rod from the local hardware store. In order to hold these pieces in place, I cut a piece of 5/8" aluminum, about 1/2" longer than the 1/2" piece and sliced it down to about 190 degrees around the 1/2" piece. I crimped the larger piece down so the 1/2" piece had to be squeezed inside the 5/8" piece. I then cut one end of the loop off at about 3" down and added two of the extensions to lengthen each end. It took me a while to get the hang of using the aluminum brazing rod, but I found that when you got the aluminum tubing hot enough (took about 2 minutes of heating with mapp gas), the aluminum rod would start to flow. It takes some practice. I never did burn through any of the aluminum tubing. The rod flow would occasionally droop to the bottom. The real trick that I learned was NOT TO MOVE or do anything until you let the end cool for at least 15 minutes when the brazing was done. If you do, the connection will be compromised and won't hold. To add strength, I added some 3M #33 tape over the extensions. Mast Extension: To extend the mast, I cut the extra ~2' of tubing to add to the top of the mast at an angle (6") and used some stainless steel clamps to hold the two pieces together. Harness: I purchased 25' of RG-83 (didn't bother with the Vapor Barrier coax) and we had some RG11. I covered the completed connections with a marine grade heat shrink tubing, some black RTV to fill the cracks and some 3M #33 tape. I used a trimmed copper pipe brackets to clamp on the shield as a connection for the loop connections. When completed, I found the SWR was about 1.65:1 at our transmitter frequency at 146.64. To get a near perfect match, I used my NanoVNA to find the LC Match (51nH series coil & 4pf shunt) and I have a 1.13:1 match at the coax to the coax to the duplexers. Hope this helps someone else who wants to update the DB-224. Mike, W0IH

A LPFM Translator has moved to a tower we have some machines on. They installed a Single-bay Broadcast FM Antenna, 7/8 Hardline, Crown Transmitter running around 150 watts. What are the recommended precautions to maintain performance of our VHF and UHF machines? 73 Josh W4ZZK

Has anyone been able to connect a RA-35/40 interface to an RF Technology Eclipse repeater for Allstar. The only information that I can find for the back IO is the attached image. Kind regards Steve