On Saturday, I went down and adjusted the squelch on the repeater. Not a pot, but a digital control on the screen. Simple description: it was set to “2”, I changed to “1”. “0” would be off.
I am now able to key up the repeater and hear it with an 2.5 watt HT and a rubber duck. I am 39.2 miles away and close to Lake Ontario. I couldn’t raise anyone yesterday, so today I went out at lunch time, and in the parking lot of building 207, still about 35 miles away, I got into the repeater and talked with Steve KA1CNF with my HT. My meter was a little under 1/2 scale. Steve said I was a little noisy but copy-able. I went to my mobile and we spoke both on analog and digital, and Steve sent a photo as he was driving into the city. He was on digital when he went down into the Browncroft Blvd valley, and the audio did garble for about 5 seconds.
Then on the way home I talked with Tom KC2TCK, and we switched to digital and we both had solid copy all the way home on DN mode. I can do the same with analog, but with a bit of noise.
I also spoke with Dave, KC2DQS, briefly, but we stayed on analog for some reason.