Needed this for a new tech so I thought I’d post it here.
HOW TO: Make your own alignment tool adapter.
Buy a solder-on 1/8" stereo jack from Radio Shack (or your favorite electronics store). About 5 bucks depending on the quality.
Cut a 3" piece of Cat5, and pull the blue pair out of it.
On one end, terminate Blue/White to pin 6 of a 6-pin RJ11 and terminate Blue to pin 5
On the other end, solder Blue/White to the barrell (Audio L-, R-) of the 1/8" stereo jack, and solder Blue to the other two pins (Audio L+, R+).
Pin 6 --------- Barrell
Pin 5 --------- L+/R+
Wrap in in black E-Tape and shrink wrap it.
Connect your headphones or earbuds and you are good to go.
Easy as that.
Thats pretty cool… never thought of that… although not a great fan of the tone to do my alignments…
Really? I can’t think of a better way. I can peak a dish or an antenna perfectly within 1-2 minutes with the tone (after 6.1). Before 6.1 the tone was not very loud and seemed to be misleading.
I used to take the handheld up, but that was just too much of a hassle. A laptop on the roof is worse.
mmm… let me try again… last we tried it, it was about 3 weeks into getting Canopy for the first time… .paid like $50 for the headset alighnment tools that never worked and broke within 2 weeks…
at the moment we have to send a laptop onto the roof, and our installation guys are breaking, scratching these things all the time…
obviously I need to try it, but is it easy to know when it is peaked via the headset… also at what point to you test the link efficiency ? don’t you have to take a laptop to the roof for that…
myself and my installers can almost always aim the dish within a 2-4 jitter during the original mounting…we usually end up just tightening it up and finshing the install with out having to revisit it.
The tone will tell you when the link is as good as it is going to get. Continuous tone, fast cadence, and and good loud volume is a great link
A break in tone is a re-reg. If you cannot get a continous tone with a fast cadence, then the radio needs to be moved.
Once you go tone you’ll never go back.
haha we just take a 100’ cat5 and leave the laptop in the truck with a power inverter and i walk around on the building till i get a good signal then i mount it and tune it from the truck we basically just holler back to each other about the signal then we put everything up and just pull wire and go to the next job.
kmeadows
I can’t see having two installers doing a 1 man job.
But if it works for you, then that’s great! How many man-hours does an install take on average?
well we have a bucket truck 35’ and its worth its weight in gold. i can do an average install in 1 hr cause i usually spend quite abit of time with the customer i find and extra 15 to 20 min with a customer cuts down on tech support alot.
but while i am mounting the hardware my partner is pulling wire so it goes fast also he does not get paid just like me we are partners.
but every job is different so it varies sometimes we even eat supper with our clients before we leave there house sometimes if invited. its a southern thing i guess.
but maybe the payday will come soon “i hope”
Leans back in chair…
…closes eyes…
…pure white bucket trucks with wings circle my tower to the music of Mozart…
i send two installers out as well…myself and one of the other partners were doing the installs and it would take ~2hrs everytime…i replace the partner with one of my buddies and we were busting them out in about 45 minutes. we usually get 3 installs done in 1 day. i only justify having 2 guys cause pushing wire down a wall while youre in a hot attic and its just not happening makes it so much easier with 2 people.
You are doing inside wiring? What are you chaging for your installations?
We charge 299 for an install and the wiring is all on the outside of the house. If they want hidden wires it’s a 100.00 upcharge.
yea we pull wire also we just charge 100 with no contract and 49.99 with 1 yr contract now.
and yes i would charge 200 if i could but dsl now has free installation here we have to atleast get close or there is no way we would even sell 1 even with supurior service.
also remeber the cost of living here compared to cali is much different for example a 2 story house built only 10 years ago 2400 square foot two commercial buildings one is 1800 sq ft the other is 3200 sq ft all sets on 8 acres of land the land tax is only 1450 per year and i built the house myself for 72000.00 
oh and on the bucket trucks i know where there is a good deal for several of them mine was one of 14 that got water damaged in NJ from verizon there are still about 8 left and there fords nice ones generators and and all for like 15000.00 but they will need a little work like ours but the motors have already been flushed and fixed.
and the average income here in only 300 to 400 per week.
my bucket truck is a chevy c3500 1999 model 35’ total height 32000 miles on it with a 454 <<<gas ouch… anyways i only have about 15000 in it
i guess we better get back to the alignment tool subject i built one along time ago i did just like jery but i put a small piezo speaker out of a computer on mine worked ok but i still use laptop mostly.
we send 2 guys, they work 4 days on 4 days off, 12 hours per day (that way we run 7 days a week)
But they are useless, 2 a day is good for them… I am looking to make them more efficient… we do not start to run the cable till we have locked down and are happy with the link efficiency.
Cabling, how are you guys tacking to the walls ? the buildings here tend to be solid concrete and tacks give us problems.
do you use any special tools ? methods ? incentives ?
Jerry,
I,m trying to use your instructions to make an alignment adaptor. I flollowed your instructions but the only sound I hear is a steady ticking noise. I'm using PMP 450 SM's, 3.65Ghz radios from Cambium. Any thoughts? I lnow this post is old and wondering if maybe the pins have changed for these radios. Any help would be appreciated!