What's up with P/N N000900L021A, the radome used on Force 200 and PMP450b? Everybody's been out of stock for awhile.
I realize this is kind of a first world problem, obviously we can deploy SMs without a radome (and we are). But it's just a piece of plastic, why the shortage?
Why use a radome in the first place? Aesthetics, windload, keeps snow out. Techs laugh at me because I have a devil of a time popping them on, especially in cold weather.
As I replied in the mail list... I think you just need to ask your VAR/Disty of choice to stock them. We have plenty of them available for sale...
Unavailable again. I’ve had them on backorder from WAV for 2 months. I can’t find anybody that has them in stock. I think Streakwave was showing 160 on order. I’m skeptical these are just sitting in a Cambium warehouse in Shanghai because the distributors don’t want to order them.
Maybe it would help if the SKU was for a box of 4, so they don’t have to open a box and ship individual radomes. If you didn’t know they come 4 to a box, you could easily order 10 or 50 of them not knowing somebody would have to open a box and pull out 2 radomes to complete the order. (I’m trying to think of a reason why the distributors wouldn’t want to stock them.)
I am sorry these are not readily available at your distributor. They are indeed still available at our Shanghai facility. The distributors only have the ability to order these in multiples of four units, as you note, because they come 4 to a box.
Because these are set up as ePMP parts, and there is precious little demand for them for use on our 450 platform equipment, the normal 450 distributors don’t take stock positions on this part. However, I would think that if they have truly placed orders for them, it should not take 4-5 months for them to get parts, despite the COVID-induced troubles that have affected shipments from overseas…
I will look into this again.
Is there a separate set of ePMP distributors? I would happily buy from one of them, just not sure who they are. I assumed the distributors who sell 450 also sell ePMP.
I’m also surprised to hear there isn’t much demand for radomes on the 450b. Granted this item is a little pricey, but who wants a bunch of calls in winter because dishes are clogged with ice and snow?
Maybe the radomes are unpopular because they are a pain to snap onto the dish.
In North America, the set of distributors that sell all Cambium equipment are the ones you’re familiar with (i.e. nearly all sell everything). In some other regions, there are distributors that are smaller and more specialized.
If other WISPs aren’t using radomes on their dishes, I recommend you consider it.
In winter I see dishes clogged up with wind driven snow/sleet/ice, a radome will prevent this. Radomes also reduce windload and improve aesthetics.