we have a small pocket of about 10-15 potential customers, they live in a hard place to get service. we were thinking about installing our small 50’ tower right in the middle and just use a SM and a switch to an AP with an omni on it. it is only going about 5-6 miles.
how much distance can an omni go? we have never used one before so…
any thoughts on going this route?
the_NAT wrote: we have a small pocket of about 10-15 potential customers, they live in a hard place to get service. we were thinking about installing our small 50' tower right in the middle and just use a SM and a switch to an AP with an omni on it. it is only going about 5-6 miles.
how much distance can an omni go? we have never used one before so...
any thoughts on going this route?
Under the right conditions we've achieved stable links at 20+ miles with MTIWE omnis. I try to keep my shots under 15 now, but it certainly is possible.
depends on terrain.
wide open you might get 20 miles. around here with the foliage were lucky to get 2-3.
VLAN1 wrote: depends on terrain.
wide open you might get 20 miles. around here with the foliage were lucky to get 2-3.
Yeah, I should've pointed out our 20 mile shot was clear LOS on top of a 100' grain leg.
I’m glad to see this topic, as we’re considering doing something similar! (Except it’ll be plopped on top of a watertower.)
We currently have a 900 sitting on the same tower as a 2.4 omni, and with only two customers on that 900 omni AP anymore, I’d rather just take that off the tower and use it elsewhere. We’ve got a bunch of integrated 900 sm’s just sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
The spot we want to cover has houses within about 2000 feet and as far away as maybe a kilometer and a half, with bunches of trees interspersed amongst some of the homes. Would the 900 system blast through the trees in these cases? I’m guessing I might want to turn down the power levels of the radios so that things don’t go deaf over time too.
The biggest thing is that I don’t want to make the mistakes/wrong assumptions this time around that our company has made in the past (and talking to the previous guys for advice results in “oh, 900 doesn’t work, just stick to 2.4…”)
SteveD wrote: I'm glad to see this topic, as we're considering doing something similar! (Except it'll be plopped on top of a watertower.)
We currently have a 900 sitting on the same tower as a 2.4 omni, and with only two customers on that 900 omni AP anymore, I'd rather just take that off the tower and use it elsewhere. We've got a bunch of integrated 900 sm's just sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
The spot we want to cover has houses within about 2000 feet and as far away as maybe a kilometer and a half, with bunches of trees interspersed amongst some of the homes. Would the 900 system blast through the trees in these cases? I'm guessing I might want to turn down the power levels of the radios so that things don't go deaf over time too.
The biggest thing is that I don't want to make the mistakes/wrong assumptions this time around that our company has made in the past (and talking to the previous guys for advice results in "oh, 900 doesn't work, just stick to 2.4...")
Not knowing your terrain, all I can say is it is certainly worth a shot, although I'd definitely move away from the omni if you just need to cover a small area in one direction.
We use 900 primarily for all of our sites. We've had much, much better luck with it than 2.4. Your noise floor will ultimately determine how successful your deployment will be, but I don't think the blanket statement that "900MHz doesn't work" is accurate. I would say it's more likely the opinion of stressed out technicians with a bad experience. My experience with it has been overwhelmingly positive.
Actually, I happened to get a couple good pictures of the site this summer. This one will give you an idea of what we’d like to cover:
It’s not a huge area, but this is the primary community we’d like to hit. There are currently two reasons to stick with our omni: A) There are places behind the water tower from this view, though a long ways away and more likely to hit other towers with our 2.4 systems. Like to keep our options open. And B) we already paid for this omni a long time ago. 
The houses in that picture are main ones we want to get (there are a few behind the trees too if you look closely.) There are a few to the left and right of the of the picture that I want to get, and anything beyond that would be gravy.
I have yet to test the noise floor, but I very well expect 900 to be fairly clean in this area due to it’s remoteness, but that’ll be the next test if we get the go ahead to do something at this site.
The real nice thing will be if we are on a seperate frequency with this AP, I’m hoping to try the “sm as a backhaul” trick here too. Should handle about 15-20 customers, I hope.