I had to comment again. I went from 22 peers to 89 and the distances seem to be absolutely silly. This is pretty damn meshtastic. Thanks for all you do!

BsBreakfast here 😂 the cellular antenna works fantastic. The range is insane being in a valley.

Everybody's a critic. Thanks for showing us your process and setup.

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

No kidding! LOL

Heyyy, you did it. That's exactly-ish what I was thinking x 10. Thanks for making these vids.

I'm learning so much about antennas because of your channel, Peter. Great content. Trying to get a mesh up in Arlington, VA here in the US.

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

Hi Jason, happy to know that. Hope you can build a big Arlington mesh network!

Meshtastic default channel is 906 mhz btw. important fact.. oh just heard you mention that in video! great stuff

@XRinger

2 ай бұрын

It's actually 906.875 MHz . If I wanted to say it as 3 numbers, it's closer to 907..

There are some excellent 915Mhz antenna on Alibarba for quite cheap that absolutely crush these tiny antennas. Having played around with them I wouldn't use the stock ones given the SWR improvements.

I use myself as a ground plane on my manpack radio. Just reach up and grab the connector when I TX.

My VNA tells me many of the Meshtastic antennas are poor and not even resonant in the US 915mHz band. So I’m building and tuning my own with big performance gains.

Thanks, Peter 👍

Tropospheric ducting can affect 900MHz, another ISM project: can sometimes travel as far as 200KM just before thunderstorms and other weird thermal environmental things that I don't understand. 🤜🤛

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

The tropoducting starts here in May so that'll be interesting. I have picked up TV signals from over 400 miles away during tropo.

@Subgunman

2 ай бұрын

I had issues with tropospheric Ducting back when I was doing paging on a radio common carrier frequency in the 454 MHz range. The receive frequency on my system for talkback paging was also being used by another paging company south of me by around 150 miles. They were using it as a link frequency where they had a high power transmitter linking other sites for their simulcast system. These idiots were running there Morse identifier at around 50 wpm. I could not decode something faster than 13 wpm. Had to visit the transmitter site multiple times until I was able to record the ID on the receiver of my system. Had to find a multi speed recorder to play back the code at half speed so I could read it. Found out who the company was and contacted them about the issue. They were unaware that we were using our RX frequency for low powered handhelds. They wound up reprogramming their equipment to another link frequency to cut the interference. Only has issues in April and again in September. Couldn’t believe it, never heard of this issue before this experience.

You could get your SWR better by having it outside of the radome you're using. Even a plastic radome tube like you have can change the SWR a bit. Also Splicing coax like that is 100% going to cause loss. Also it's critical your ground plane radials be the correct length as well. The more detailed you have your antenna to the Freq you want, the better the SWR, the better it will TX and RX.

So are those little 915mhz antennas that come with all the LoRa modules all monopole? Hence the need for a ground plane to function better?

@kevinroberts781

2 ай бұрын

Makes sense

I would not put that spliced coax in the redone. You are going to get condensate/moisture in it. Not an if but when. Look up the connectors you need and the coax length and buy a cable.

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

The whole point of putting the T-Beam inside the radome was to keep it out of the elements. The radome has a weep hole in the bottom to equalize pressure and not allow it to condense. Also I don't live in the Amazon jungle. The coax is also taped up really good.

Are there any Discord channels you visit?

Any vna network analyzer worth purchasing

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

This is the one I bought. It says in the description that it goes up to 1.5 GHz however I found mine goes up to 2 GHz. www.amazon.com/dp/B08FBHVFDB

SWR of 2.0 is only 5% reflected power. Not too terrible. "Could be worse", yup yup. Throw your antenna up much higher, you won't regret it.

Get it up higher I see my node in your list once I see your message i will respond. -SC Router Burlington

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

Hi Router Burlington, I saw you pop up on the 8th during the eclipse. Hopefully when I mount the HelTec directional relay antennas at the top of the tower we'll have a solid connection. kzread.info/dash/bejne/oZZqpsqsodK7Zaw.html

Peter you could do much better, I'm sure you know. It's making me itch to see a proper antenna with meshtastic

@randykitchleburger2780

2 ай бұрын

Nevermind. I was too early. Nice antenna tower

too much coax/loss

@peterfairlie2296

2 ай бұрын

3 inches is too much? LOL!