Dual-Frequency Sectors

Products ePMP
7

The ITElite are junk. We have one tower with 3 of them on it and honest to god the customer radios seem to see the sectors facing away from them better than the one facing them.  The 2.4Ghz pattern is garbage also, doesn't even seem to come close to 120 degrees.  

If you could shield them real good and maybe deploy them as 90 degree sectors  they might be usable.

We have 1 of the KPP dual sectors on a tower. It's a lot heavier than any of our other sectors and yeah that $600.00 price tag kind of hurts. They do their job pretty good though and in the long run save a ton on tower space and/or monthley cost. They perform at least as well as any of the Cambium sectors we have in the air.  

8

>>brubble1 wrote: "and yeah that $600.00 price tag kind of hurts."

Yea - but I initially thought they were $850 USD, which would then be about $1,200 CAD$ each. But, the $850 was converted to Canadian dollars already, thankfully. That is still pretty steep - but I don't know how else to fit four 2.4 & four 5Ghz antennas on the towers.

9
@ninedd wrote:

>>brubble1 wrote: "and yeah that $600.00 price tag kind of hurts."

Yea - but I initially thought they were $850 USD, which would then be about $1,200 CAD$ each. But, the $850 was converted to Canadian dollars already, thankfully. That is still pretty steep - but I don't know how else to fit four 2.4 & four 5Ghz antennas on the towers.

600 for a dual sector thats a good quality radio isn't bad.   

249 for a good dual slant 2.4,  

189 for a decent 5ghz liner

438

rent on 8 sectors instead of 4......   only need a few months for us to save money.  4 more sectors would equal $100 more a month on cell towers. 

the patterns look pretty good on the KP antennas, ITE lite.... has a reputation for low cost and thats about all. 

2 Likes
10

Well, the main thing I'm wanting is the best posisble performance.  Spending an extra $1,000 on the tower side of things, is only $10 each on 100 clients.  It's less than $1 / month / client for a year. So, any upgrades and improvements we can do on the tower side which benefit a buch of clients - that's money well spent.

That all being said - I had previously thought that I was quoted $850 US$, and that would convert to about $1,200 CAD$ - so about $5K for four sectors...  which is lots for an experiment to see how well they work. :)

>I'll let you know on the KP antennas after we get them up.
>We are going to use the dual slant 2.4 and liner 5ghz model

So - I look forward to your results Chris  - thank you for your excellent input.  :)

11

we haven't hung them yet but here are some photos from the ground.   they are built solid and assemble easy!  

4 Likes
12

Hi.  So, have you deploy any of these sectors yet?  If so, how did they work out?  These would be a great wasy to deploy on our existing towers which already have non-cambium 2.4Ghz antennas on them, with precious little physical room left. This would allow us to add 4 sectors, and to have both 2.4 and 5Ghz Cambium gear, and to transition our non-Cambium customers over. 

So, these would be ideal...   IF there was a 'LITE' Access Point in 2.4Ghz available.  :)  That would help lower the initial cost of delpoying ePMP, and we could then upgrade the license when we switch over the 11th person per sector.

SO - If anyone else wants to see a 2.4Ghz 'Lite' 10 user GPS access point...  please click here and VOTE. :) 

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/Your-Ideas/2-4Ghz-ePMP-LITE-10-user-GPS-Synced-Access-Point/idi-p/51619#M765

Remember, every vote counts.  :)

1 Like
13

we have not gotten them deployed, weather keeps turning into a problem.   we are planning on getting them up on the 16th if weather holds out.

14

I don't think they have any plans to release a 2.4Ghz ePMP Lite AP.  But, the current promotion makes them much more affordable (buy 2 get 1 free).

15

We have bought some of these 2.4/5Ghz DualBand / DualPol sectors last year...

http://www.lanbowan.com/ANT2458D20K-V2H2.htm

...but we also haven't deployed any of them yet.

16

they are up, we need to adjust the sector tilt, rain moved in and we had to get down, but so far, they rock!  

the 2.4 ghz side, its a narrower vertical range than the cambium, but from a performance in its band, i can't tell a difference.   its side lobes are very sharp past 90 degrees, which is great.  FTB is good.  they are flat, or about flat and we need them tilted down for the best benefit.    those antenna sit about 400' above most of the target audience. 

the 5ghz side, re replaced the ubnt 5g90-20 sectors and we saw on average 2 db drop, as expected for customers center beam, but no drop from the UBNT sectors on the edges, the fall off past 90 degrees is much sharper, a few customers who could beacon the neighing panel can no longer hear it (possibly a slight change in direction too) but the FTB seems much higher with these guys. we had few strange pockets far out that are gone, one neighbor having a 65 db lock, 5 houses down with the same path being 2 or 3 points different are now 1 point different or the same.   overall seems to be a very clean, smooth radio pattern from these.  in my opinion, very worth the money. 

after adjusting the tilt, we may switch to this sector exclusively when using both freqs. 

I'll report back once the tilts fixed, customers that are less than a mile away in the valley are awful weak from the lack of til.   

1 Like
17

OK - sounds good, thanks.  I appreciate the update.  I don't really mind spending the money if needed - we have enough trees here that we're going to have to continue with 2.4Ghz in most/all locations - so a DualFrequency antenna makes sense for the tower real-estate. They are our towers (so we're not a per-antenna rental) but still - there are only so many sectors you can mount and be able to still climb around them and so on.  So, these look attractive from that standpoint - 4 physical antennas, with 8 AP's and both frequencies covered.... boom.

That being said - I don't want to spend $3200 CAD$ on a failed experment, or on one which some other brand for  $1,000 might have been as good or better - so it's great to get everyone's feedback and experience. But, it's mostly just about the time - to get these all bought, shipped, configured and mounted on the tower, that's going to be tricky to schedule in our busy, busy days anyway - so whatever I do, I want it to work first time if possible. :)

We got our first KP DualFrequency sector in today, so I'll put it through some tests and compare them to the Lanbowan and Cambium and KP (SingleFrequency) Sectors - then we'll have some more data to help decide too.

I do really appreciate the updates on your progress and feedback on your results. That really helps us decide how to proceed or not.  Thanks. :)

18

My dealer told me the dual slant 2.4 was discontinue so we order the dual band from kp performance. I order some RF elements antenna to make some test… Now im juste waiting for delivery…

19

Another option, of particular interest to WISPs who are famously cheap ;-), is the IngniteNet Fusion sector. It's only $109, and has 14dB on 2.4 and 17 dB on 5 GHz. However, it's still apparently vaporware; the spec sheet has a lot of TBD on it. I wonder how good these will be in the field.

20

we've got the dual slant model and i check on them today, KP still sells them.   

we've finished the tune and EXTREMELY IMPRESSED.  

dislikes:  the radio case cover well, sucks.   we had to cut the bottoms to make room for the GPS cables and let our cables through, looks like it was made with the idea of a flexible cat 5 inside i'm thinking, but the cable we use doesn't like to bend that tight so we cut it away some.   

the tilt arms are not marked for forward tilt, we always use a digital angle finder to be sure, but its nice to jump to "about right" and finish off.  they are noticed though so as you move the antenna forward its stays in place well while your bolting it down.  

the good stuff:

the radio pattern, great. its very tight and clean on the 5ghz side, its vertical spread is 4.8 degrees, and the 2.4 is 7 degrees. the sides roll off fast and are clean, we haven't seen anything strange with the RSSI bouncing around.

the 2.4 ghz side is 26db FTB, a little less than cambiums radio, we changed the target power to -64 from -60 and we've kept the uplink modulations well.   5ghz FTB is right on the money, MCS 15s.   2.4 is holding 14s. 

other thoughts, they don't have a mounting system for them currently so we made ours from unistrust and 2" pipe, and a stand off arm (i'll post pictures soon) worked well, but completed weight was about 80 pounds.  

I can't see a difference on these antenna from the cambium 2.4 dual slants to these, so wonderful!    the 5ghz, seems to be a decent improvement on keeping the noise down some, tight vertical fan and gain.    

bang for the buck, these panels definitely have my vote.

these 4 sectors (8 radios) have 141 EPMP subs between them right now. 

2 Likes
21

Good to hear Chris. I look forward to all the pictures you can post - including the unistrut mounting deal you finagled together.  We're going to need to do something as well - so I'll appreciate as many photos of your expertise as you can muster. :)

You are doing exactly what we're planning - except that we also have to then change out all the subs from the existing brand to ePMP - so I really apprecate you taking the time to post this info for the community. :)

22

here are the mounts we made for them.   we used 1 1/2 inch, i'll use 2" for the next set, the clamps grabbed, but was a little to close to completely closed for my taste.   the strut camps worked great and made the adjustments on the tower very easy. 

2 Likes
23

one more quick note to anyone else who wants to try these: 

tilting these guys was a bit fun,  the tight vertical spread is great in my opinion but it made tilting these interesting with a very, very smaller tolerance for error.  a digital angle finder is a must as well as proper planning for these.     a quick guess or an assumption could potentially kill these antennas performance.   only a 4.8 degree spread to work with. 

1 Like
24

This is very similar and yet only 41 pounds:

http://www.mccowntech.com/3p-36-sector-antenna-mount-with-3-36-masts/

25

Hi Chris.  In your 2.4Ghz side, what channels / widths did you settle on.  I mean - I know that every environment could be different - but I'm currious what you picked for channels/widths?

26
@Chris_Bay wrote:

dislikes:  the radio case cover well, sucks.   we had to cut the bottoms to make room for the GPS cables and let our cables through, looks like it was made with the idea of a flexible cat 5 inside i'm thinking, but the cable we use doesn't like to bend that tight so we cut it away some.    

On the Single Frequency KP 2.4Ghz sectors - we liked those quite a bit, BUT the case also sucks.  Once they are mounted to the tower, if you need to open the case, the antenna mounts don't stand the antenna out far enough to be able to open their case with the antenna still mounted to the tower.  We ended up modifying the cover by cutting diagonally from the thumb-screw holes - so that the case only has to come open a 1/4 inch and then can slide downwards and off.  

Also - the other non-like for the DualFrequency Sectors - they didn't come with the RP-SMA to N-RA pigtails.  The single frequency sector came with pigtails, so I assumed the DualFreq would also come with pigtails.  So ifyou buy 4 sectors, 4 connectors on each - you'll need 16 pigtails.  It's not that big of a deal - just an unexpected surprise is all.