Here is a photo of an ePMP installation from 2014. Post your photo of older ePMP equipment to this thread that is still in use today (and let us know the uptime and time in service). Each week, one lucky winner will win a T-Shirt. Winners will be announced each Friday now through Aug 31, 2020.
Nice!! Where are these and what do they connect?
We are a WISP on spain!Ā we use the connectorized epmp 1000 to share internetĀ (as PTP) to a little tower very close to the main one (1.2 KM) it rocks with 70MB thoughput aprox (100MB LAN ONLY )
Is that an F110 up there rusting like crazy ?Ā
Edit: The closer I look at it , I don't think it's a Force 110 but man it looks really familure, what is that thing ?
You want a photo of old equipment? 
This is a drone shot I took a couple of months ago of our West Rockingham tower, about 1/2 mile from my house. Top is a cluster of old PMP100 900MHz gearā¦ only one radio still powered, we havenāt bothered to remove the gear yet. Below that is PMP320 3.65GHz gear (yes, itās still on, and yes, the FCC has approved us to continue using it until early 2021) Below THAT is the first of the ePMP1000 sectors, below that a couple of PMP450 900MHz sectors, and then an ePMP3000. Below that (out of frame) is a 2-way radio antenna and an ePMP backhaul.
You did say āold equipmentā 
Not sure when we installed the ePMP, but it was before 2016.
j
OK completely off topic here but what is your experience, opinion, anecdotal evidence, regarding what I assume are anti-esd-lightning-whatever wire bushes at the top of your tower ?
I consulted with the owner, whoās responsible for all of that. He said the āsandspursā never really did what heād hoped. (note that we are in an exceptionally lightning-prone area here, Sandhills region of North/South Carolina, centered in Richmond County) We did have a few get spectacularly vaporized. Our current ābest practiceā for lightning damage avoidance includes 20+ ft grounded copper pipe sticking out top of tower, ferrite rings on all cables running up/down tower, (different material and specs from what we use for FM towers) and rather hefty grounding efforts. (multiple 2" copper pipes ~20ft into ground, filled and embedded in rock salt/āGroundEnhancingMaterialā, 4 gauge grounding to tower and power meter base, etc) We own several towers (owner builds them) from 140ft to 500ft tall, currently updating the ālaggardsā to essentially have wells drilled and backfilled with salt/GEM and copper pipes. Weāre also working on automated systems to decouple the towers from Mains AC power when storms are rolling through, and run solely on batteries for the duration, eliminating ground paths through the circuitry as much as possible.
Weāve also noticed that PMP450 gear is pretty resistant, old PMP320 gear is almost unkilllable, but ePMP radios seem to explode when simply threatened with lightning. We probably blow up about $20k-$40k per year of tower equipment, mostly ePMP APs. But whenever an old PMP320 was lightning-damaged, usually equipment came back to the shop charred & smoking.
j
Itās our experience also that 450/i is very tough in that we have on several occasions had every ePMP on a tower taken out while the 450/i was completely unaffected. In all fairness though it used to be the ubiquiti rockets getting knocked out (and the only antenna I have ever lost to lightning , and we have lost 4 of them over the years, was Ubiquiti Omniās). Iāve been told by the telco and electric guys that we are not only in tornado ally but also lightning ally.
Copper pipe ! I never thought of that. What we have triedā¦ and seems to work on some towers and not others was 4g copper wire inside of and sticking out a few feet at the top of 10ā 1/2" pvc which we mount on every sector/radio (because it was much lighter than a 10ft copper rod). Over time though it starts drooping to muchā¦ will give copper pipe some serious consideration, itās light and rigid!
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to what works and what doesnāt. Our first tower has had the same 900Mhz Canopy AP and LMG Omni on it for ā¦ probably close to 14 years now and since has grown to 6 other APās and 4 PTP and I have never lost anything on that tower in all these years. I have two others at 9 and 5 years and nothing ever lost.
Then I have other towers, one in particular, that will lose radios almost every single storm for a year or three and then for no reason go years without losing a single radio and then suddenly start losing them again. We have spent thousands on grounding, installed lightning rods at every sector/omni, SSās at the top/bottom or no SS, ground to the tower, donāt ground to the towerā¦ even paid professionals to come out and install lightning rods, pump chemicals into the ground and drive grids of ground rodsā¦ itās just totally random it seems and what seems to help at one tower doesnāt at another.
Even bought a Earth Ground Testing setup so I could track the resistance at the towers with problems and I expected there to be a difference in the years the towers lost a lot and years they didnātā¦ but noā¦ nothing really changed year to year or between towers that never lose radios and ones that do.
We have a few customers that will lose their radio every single time it storms if they donāt unplug them and one that it seems loses the radio sometimes even if they have it unplugged.
I use to actually enjoy storms and nature but since building a WISP I hate storms and I hate treesā¦
Thats some hefty esd protection! In south Saskatchewan (top of tornado alley) we get some nice lightning too but found simple esd protection of directed path rather than full R56 methids to work better. A 2ft esd rod attached to the antenna mount above the antenna and bonded to the tower esd runner (not just the leg but a heavy cable for esd protection) plus a 10ft 3/4" ground rod as a lightning spire has been more than adequate since we havent been loosing radios too often despire the 40ish lightning strikes so far this year. We did loose a epmp3000L this year but that was due to a isolation issue with the use of a power pole as a temp tower (temp system for a construction project) and the esd strap looks like a 1A fuse after being popped on 220vac!
As for photos, we still have one pmp100-900 (p11 AP to a p10SM, circa 2013) in use, an original ptp110 and epmp1000 integrated circa 2015 still in active use but no photos on hand since we have been removing unused equipment and are still cleaning it up.
Second that for storms, trees and let me add wind to the list.
