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antenna question (lemmy.zip)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So I live in a small city of around 50,000 people and we have a router that's 200 feet up on a tower with a 5.8 DBI antenna.

There's a guy 17.5 miles away who wants to get into the mesh and his node is on a 30-foot flagpole and also has a 5.8 DBI antenna.

There is no major elevation change between the two nodes and according to a distance calculator, the line of sight between both antennas should be about 24 miles, which would cover the distance with no problem.

With that said, the nodes are not connecting together. And I'm wondering if that's because of the 5.8 DBI antenna gain on both sides, or if there's something else I might be missing.

Edit: On a side note, I live 3.7 miles from the router, and it has trouble hearing me, but I do not have trouble hearing it with my T1000E. And I'm also wondering if that's because of the antenna gain on the router side.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Packet TTL (not sure if this applies in meshtastic) and local noise floor seem like reasonable things to evaluate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's been at least once or twice where he's accidentally left his node on his dashboard in his car overnight, and it has connected before. So if that's at ground level, basically, I would think a node 30 feet up on a tower would connect properly. To the best of my knowledge, the noise floor around here is around -107 dBm.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hmm. Those aside has he isolated feedline continuity and grounding, and antenna?

Power supply noise?

I feel like you’ve probably tried all these, but I don’t have any better ideas.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The antenna is connected directly to the node, I think. So that shouldn't be any kind of problem. And it's being powered by solar. So there shouldn't be any noise in the power line.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Need to hook the antenna up to an analyzer and make sure it has continuity and no other issues. Manufacturing defects happen, and can be insidious if unable to see them. NanoVNAs are great, and inexpensive.

Depending on solar setup, there might be micro switches putting out awfully loud RFI. For a short time use a suitable battery and see if transmissions improve.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Alright, I will make those suggestions when the guy comes in for work tomorrow.