We have recentley come into to the oppertunity to use an AM tower as a site for customers. Does anyone have any experiance with this ? What are some of the challenges you had on the tower? How did you eliminate these issues?
I am also a AM & FM Broadcast Engineer and have extensive experience in the area.
In addition, I own several high powered FM stations and know very well first hand what it takes to minimize radiation into the Cambium radios and equipment.
In my opinion, you are asking for major problems with RF radiation.
In addition, for what it is worth, anything that that is added to the AM structure will require the AM licensee to remeasure the base impedance of the AM radiator and modification of the AM station's FCC license if the station is in the U.S.
That is a several thousand dollars cost for someone, plus the inteference to your RF and Ethernet cabling that you will be experiencing.
1 Like
Yeah, high power FM towers are hard enough... AM's are a nightmare.
Most AM towers are the antenna. Meaning the transmitter is connected directly to it. Special decouplers are used when 2-way radio antennas are mounted on this type of tower. For a WISP application, I doubt that such decouplers are made for Ethernet cable.
We eliminate the AM tower issue by staying far away.
Seriously, everything has to be bonded. You are running your ethernet in conduit. Even if you run fiber to devices at the top it's going to be a nighmare. And let's not mention every time you add stuff to the tower it has to be re-studied because it changes the radiation pattern of the RF coming from the AM side.