Seems like a wad of ant flesh on and around the antenna patches would cause some loss and wads of ants on the heat sinks doesn't seem like a good idea either. Replaced a F200 this weekend that had been knocked out in a storm. The radio was packed full of ants, eggs, and larva. They were obviously coming and going around the Ethernet port which, on the F200 anyway, has a gap around it just big enough to let ants in and possibly the two holes inside the Ethernet port.
Looking at the vents on the F300 though it appears that ant's, or even bigger pests, in the equipment may not be something you consider a problem. I haven't cracked an F300 open yet though so I can't say what all exactly those vents give pests access to.
So while writing this I looked at RSSI graphs for before no ants radio vs full of ants radio and was surprised to find that the RSSI was actually a little worse on the ant free radio... but then I noticed the new radio has the chain imbalance problem (almost 10dBm difference on a perfect LOS shot). I'm not set up in my new office/shop yet to test for this while/before setting radios up for install/repairs and after a really big and nasty storm like this I was in a hurry and didn't think to check for the chain imbalance problem after swapping out the radios (and I got distracted with the ant thing).
So yeah, another truck roll to replace that new radio... thanks ePMP team...
They get into the contacts of $20,000 heating and air units so I am sure a $125 SM is not out of their realm. Pack the ethernet port full of dielectric grease. Once rj45 is slid in problem solved. Not to mention it helps with oxidation and other issues.
Oh yeah. We get a radio full of ants back every week or so. Brought back a Mikrotik from the field last week and it was full of ants too. Diatomaceous earth is supposed to keep them away, and it does seem to help a bit.
The ants get in through a gap between the Ethernet port block and the opening it sits in. Attached is a pic of 3 brand new F200's . On the first radio you could drive a truck through the gap, on the the second radio there is no gap, I can't even get a small flat zip tie into it, on the third radio it's not as bad as the first but even a large zip tie easily goes into the gap. So radios 1 and 3 are ant friendly.
Note that as far as I can tell the Ethernet port opening and the Ethernet port on all the other epmp radios (I don't have any 190's handy to look at) do not have this problem. On those radios the fit between the Ethernet port and the opening is very tight only the F200 seems to have this problem.
