As of about 10am today (Thursday Sept. 20), we are now transmitting on the top antenna, but receiving on a new antenna – a vertical (ground plane) mounted at the base of the tower. I am very interested to hear your observations. Your reception of the repeater should be the same, but there will definitely be some differences on the repeater’s receive side. It is now vertical (big improvement), but it is 800 feet lower (big loss). Did we gain more than we lost? Also, the cracklies should be completely gone. Yet one more positive factor is that we probably have less site noise at this antenna location (i.e., we don’t have kilowatts of UHF being crammed down our throat from the TV broadcast antenna).
So, it is a big unknown. An experiment. In a few days, we’ll flip flop and receive from the top, transmit from the bottom.
73 – KD2SL.
The KD2SL Repeaters - Syracuse, NY 
Hi Kevin, I setup my KX3 at my summer QTH (Sandy Pond) this afternoon. Running 10W into a PAR Electronics 6M end fed wire (running E-W) about 8′ off the ground. I could bring up the repeater but had no answers to my call. About an S1 on the S meter. (Switched over to the Auburn Repeater but could not bring it up.) 73, Fred Herbs, WB2PEM Sandy Pond
Hi Kevin – Got on the repeater yesterday and made a short QSO just using my AH-50 and the stock antenna, good signal from the southeast part of the city, but some cracklies. Could just be where I was – tried the rig for the first time, so i’ll move around a bit next time and advise. 73!