Hi everyone,
I've got a few nodes here at my home in san clemente that have been able to hit both the W6BGR's KRUM site in SJC as well as AE6XE's site on saddleback. I am able to pass traffic from time to time depending on conditions but I would say that both are marginal connections in terms of LOS and SQ. For the saddleback connection (5ghz, 16 miles away) I'm running an m5 on a 30" dish so it was challenging to aim, but I have pretty low signal even after messing with it a bunch. I think the KRUM site I am able to hit is just a tad under a ridge and is being obscured by terrain for me, it's about 2.5 miles away so even with playing with dish alignment things don't really change. I haven't been able to hit KRUM with 5Ghz so I suspect those antennas are not facing south.
The end goal I have is to connect my datacenter space in irvine to a mesh node and and have an alternate path to it outside of the internet, or be able to provide carrier network access in the event of an emergency via the datacenter side. This datacenter site I have roof rights to and the cabling in place but given my challenges here at home I want to be sure I can get that end connected up without iteration since I have pretty much one shot at it and need to get it right.
That brings me to my question - given the above scenario should I focus on higher gain equipment to improve my setup, or is there no other way than adding intermediate nodes (I am willing to do this) to connect my areas.
For KRUM specifically, I will reach out to W6BGR about antennas. Ideally I can get my home node connected better there, but I want to hear from you all what has helped in potentially similar situations.
Thanks,
Eric - kn6ksf
I've got a few nodes here at my home in san clemente that have been able to hit both the W6BGR's KRUM site in SJC as well as AE6XE's site on saddleback. I am able to pass traffic from time to time depending on conditions but I would say that both are marginal connections in terms of LOS and SQ. For the saddleback connection (5ghz, 16 miles away) I'm running an m5 on a 30" dish so it was challenging to aim, but I have pretty low signal even after messing with it a bunch. I think the KRUM site I am able to hit is just a tad under a ridge and is being obscured by terrain for me, it's about 2.5 miles away so even with playing with dish alignment things don't really change. I haven't been able to hit KRUM with 5Ghz so I suspect those antennas are not facing south.
The end goal I have is to connect my datacenter space in irvine to a mesh node and and have an alternate path to it outside of the internet, or be able to provide carrier network access in the event of an emergency via the datacenter side. This datacenter site I have roof rights to and the cabling in place but given my challenges here at home I want to be sure I can get that end connected up without iteration since I have pretty much one shot at it and need to get it right.
That brings me to my question - given the above scenario should I focus on higher gain equipment to improve my setup, or is there no other way than adding intermediate nodes (I am willing to do this) to connect my areas.
For KRUM specifically, I will reach out to W6BGR about antennas. Ideally I can get my home node connected better there, but I want to hear from you all what has helped in potentially similar situations.
Thanks,
Eric - kn6ksf
- updated my equipment to latest versions of the aredn software.I think the LQM is much better in the latest versions.
- got a few extra DB by fine tuning alignment of my dishes, and getting them up to the max height possible here. Was only inches we're talking about but every bit helps
- Finally, I decided to purchase a few mikrotik basebox radios (30db) to get myself more gain. I have another higher gain dish coming still for my 2ghz node which should put me in really good shape here.