  We present results from three-dimensional general relativistic simulations of
binary neutron star coalescences and mergers using public codes. We considered
equal mass models where the baryon mass of the two Neutron Stars (NS) is
$1.4M_{\odot}$, described by four different equations of state (EOS) for the
cold nuclear matter (APR4, SLy, H4, and MS1; all parametrized as piecewise
polytropes). We started the simulations from four different initial interbinary
distances ($40, 44.3, 50$, and $60$ km), including up to the last 16 orbits
before merger. That allows to show the effects on the gravitational wave phase
evolution, radiated energy and angular momentum due to: the use of different
EOSs, the orbital eccentricity present in the initial data and the initial
separation (in the simulation) between the two stars.
  Our results show that eccentricity has a major role in the discrepancy
between numerical and analytical waveforms until the very last few orbits,
where "tidal" effects and missing high-order post-Newtonian coefficients also
play a significant role.
  We test different methods for extrapolating the gravitational wave signal
extracted at finite radii to null infinity. We show that an effective procedure
for integrating the Newman-Penrose $\psi_4$ signal to obtain the gravitational
wave strain $h$ is to apply a simple high-pass digital filter to $h$ after a
time domain integration, where only the two physical motivated integration
constants are introduced. That should be preferred to the more common
procedures of introducing additional integration constants, integrating in the
frequency domain or filtering $\psi_4$ before integration.
