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. :)
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.
- IMG_20160305_120329002.jpg (3.55 MB)
- IMG_20160305_143847731.jpg (2.89 MB)
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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.
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This is very similar and yet only 41 pounds:
http://www.mccowntech.com/3p-36-sector-antenna-mount-with-3-36-masts/
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?
@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.
we genrally use 10mhz channels for the 2.4, sometimes 20 if we need the bandwith, and customers keep decent modulations . we only use the 2.4 for nlos connections, everything we can get on 5ghz we can.
if there is spectrum for 40 mhz channels, and a need i'll use 40, otherwise we use 20 so we don't trash the RF.
usually see 30 + meg down from the 2.4 and 70s from the 5ghz depending on the links, the couple 40 mhz wide sectors get over 120 meg at night with plenty of room to spare :)
@ninedd wrote:
@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.
we had to buy the pigtails too... i want to say with shipping pigtails and antennas it was right at 2500 for 4 of them, saving $100 a month on tower rent will be worth it, plus the labor saved from installing 4 antennas rather than 8 helps off set that cost. probably only 2 or so hours, but thats still a few hundred off!
not to mention, thats a lot of edge capacity for $$$
@Chris_Bay wrote:we genrally use 10mhz channels for the 2.4, sometimes 20 if we need the bandwith, and customers keep decent modulations . we only use the 2.4 for nlos connections, everything we can get on 5ghz we can.
Most of our clients are NonLOS. We're a mix of farm / forest area to the south of the city, but north of the city get's pretty bushy pretty quickly. Even in farmland, every farmhouse is built in a bluff - or they have a think/tall windrow around the yardsite. Ya know, it's almost like they didn't consider the implications of high speed wireless internet when these farms were built 100 years ago! ;)
So, do you typically use channels... 4 and 9 to try to get between the 1/6/11 peaks? Or are you using 1 & 11 to try to mitigate any self interference as much as possible too - or does it just depend from tower to tower for your 2.4Ghz?
we've got 2 re-use methods we do
ABAB for large towers, and busy spots with 5ghz there also channels 11, 8
small or compact, not so busy sites ABC channels 11, 8, 5
for a small site, i'm referring to our 100' poles and mini towers, we've got on area, with 8 100 sites, and only 4 miles across if you draw it as a square, using ABC reuse and tilting the panels to stop just short of the next site, we've been ables to re-use the crap out of the channels while keeping this clean and fast. we intentionally cut the coverage down to small tight areas, and used another small site to deal with the terrain shifts, customer needs ect and local building code. - that area was fun. These smaller sites normally only serve 30 to 60 homes.
the big towers with ABAB some tilting concepts for the quick re-use. we lease sites as close as 3 miles apart and tilt the sectors so the -3 top lobe is sitting just short of the next tower, add in the extra height of the antennas at that site AGL, and you've done a lot for helping your FTB on the next sector and those subs on it. we also change our target receive power to -65 when possible (its got to be quite for that to be ok) and it helps a lot as well.
we also use KP reflectors when needed for more gain, and to help with noise.
the few times we've used 20 mhz, it was centered on 7 leaving the 10 mhz channel on 11.
with your obstructions, sometimes higher isn't better, we've got plenty of 5ghz links that are fine 8' off the ground but not even close on the customers roof thanks to trees.