I am looking to use an advantage 2.4 ap and sm as a BH (6mi LOS) in a new build out. I’d like to put an active antenna on each rather than a passive parabolic grid or dish.
Has anyone connectorized integrated 2.4s before and if so could they point me toward a good information source on how to do this?
Otherwise tell me I’m crazy and that a parabolic will work just fine.
The safest and most cost effective thing to do would be to use a Test Adapter from Wireless Beehive
http://www.wbmfg.com/antennas/testadapter
There is an additional 2 dB of insertion loss vs. connectorizing the units, but you will keep your warranty intact
I couldn’t follow the link. Are you talking about just a passive beehive stinger model?
I’ve soldered many radios before and these 2.4’s look easy. I just want to make sure I remove the right piece. Looks like three small solder joints on the active antenna side but to get at them I would need to cut off the active antenna or get at it from the other side which is under a ‘reflector’???
Can anyone who has done this chime in?
6 miles with line of site? You’re crazy. Put a couple stinger reflectors on them and call it a day.
I would not recommend connectorizing the units yourself. I agree with jwcn, Use a pair of reflectors.
You would at the very least need the proper equipment to perform the operation, lol and that doesn’t involve a soldering iron. That is because you can not get the area hot enough let alone the board and the connector at the same time. Do not solder the cable directly into the board and do not cut the shield to get a good solder connection on the center lead. I see those and cringe every time. People tend to cut the shields with a dremal and what happens when you cut metal by grinding it? Well a nice amount of metal partials become trapped under the shield, not good. Sorry for the Copyright we had other company’s ripping off our pictures.
Here is a few pictures of some bad connectorization jobs (by far not the worst I have seen).
This is what you want them to look like:
6 miles would be 2X using a bare AP and a WB Stinger. Plus that AP would be available to sell additional customers from.
If you are trying to keep the beam narrow to avoid polluting your RF space then just use reflectors and turn down the power, however the AP’s are not legal with a dish, only SM’s and BH’s.
If it’s gain you want, interestingly you cannot get any more gain than an SM and a reflector without going to some really big antennas
A 2400SM puts 25dB into the internal antenna
A standard reflector is 12dB @ 2.4GHz
The internal antenna is 8dB
The total system gain is 45dB
The solid parabolic has good F/B rejection
A 2400SMC will have ~24dB at the N connector with a perfect solder joint
A 39" Grid antenna is 24db
The total system gain is 48dB
That’s a big antenna and a lot of added cost for +3dB of gain
Truth be told, in PTP situations, Canopy PTP200 is pretty inefficient @ 25MHz channel for 14Mbps aggregate. Unless you need to sync the radios with other 2.4 Canopy AP’s you have a lot of other options that are far less costly in terms of price and spectrum. For example you can use Ubiquity Bullets in H-POL on a 10MHz channel and get the same or better throughput.