I'm joining the 3G world in a big way and I need advice.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

I was actually planning to use electrical without reading your response to that. I have a black roll of it here on my desk but I wasn't sure it was good for sealing in outdoors conditions. Now I know.

And knowing is half the battle... Razz

PS: I like scotch.

ChoP · EVDO User Joined: 13 Jul 2008 Posts: 54 Location: Alabama

I know it's a little late in the game but the first thing you should have done is have Megapath pinpoint the towers, providers, and the bands used that you could access.

If you are locked into 1900MHz by contract there isn't much you can do about it, looks like Sprint or nothing. If not, using the Verizon option at 800MHz, if that's what they are running there, may have been a much better choice.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Megapath did not provide any of this information except very general QoS terms and what carriers they operated with, I had to research and discover most of it myself. That said, they do use Verizon, Verizon is in my general area, but their coverage is pretty poor. I can switch to them on the router's Mobile Provider config, but it doesn't actually change to them (probably because there is no tower as close or as good as the sprint ones).

With the grid probably not properly aligned and sighted manually out my kitchen window at the 12 mile tower I was getting a very solid 94-98 RSSI in EVDO mode with a constant -4 to -6 Ec/Io. I have a feeling this will only improve with roof mounting and more careful sighting.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Ok! Sat dish down, grid up, mounted approx 10ft off the ground (my roof apex is only 15 ft and my landlord said the roof was not in good enough condition to drill for a new mount so I am stuck with this one, however he's going to get me a pipe to add on as an extension to get some altitude) and I'm seeing roughly the increase I expected. I went from 7" Omnidirectional antennas connected to my router (typically fluctuating evdo RSSI signal from -98 to -108, sometimes better, sometimes worse, with Ec/Io averaging probably -8 to -11) to this new parabolic grid setup and now I have a RSSI in the mid 90s seemingly solid (only had it set up for a couple of hours so far) rarely above -100, with Ec/Io of -4 to -8 but sometimes it does jump above -10 still. I also still drop pings quite frequently (roughly 1 out of 40) and every 10th ping or so is triple the average of 250, at 700-1000. This is with the connection idle of course. Any ideas? I have not scientifically mounted the grid, not beyond doing a direct line calculation here:

http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm

and then sighting based on objects, tweaking until I found the best signal. The speed is fine, the random ping fluctuations need to stop if at all possible. Any ideas?

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Picture:

(picture removed)

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Another question: What precautions should I take in regards to lightning? The grid itself is not higher than the apex of the roof and there are at least 3 dozen trees, 40 foot or taller, within 500 feet. Was the previous mount, installed by the satellite company, grounded properly?

I'm no expert on lightning or lightning precautions, as a hardware engineer for PC my lightning safety basically amounts to making sure every device is plugged into a $100k insured surge suppressor. Razz

Bert65 · Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 6:42 pm Post subject:

I am no expert on lightning either, But every antenna I ever put up had a notice about lightning saftey and grounding in the package.

Go to Home Depot, Lowes or some such. Get an 8' ground rod, length to suit of copper or aluminium ground wire and a couple of clamps {NOT HOSE CLAMPS} one to clamp the wire to the ground rod, after you drive it in the ground until only enough sticks out to clamp to and one to clamp the wire to the antenna mount some where.

If your not sure about what you are doing, talk to an electrician !

Good luck and good surfing.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Thanks for the advice I'll do this tomorrow first thing. Hope tonight's scattered t-storms don't get me... Shocked

colebert · EVDO Junkie Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 170

What is your methodology on your ping test?

I would do a tracert then try to ping the first (pingable) hop in the list. You've got such a jacked up tracert due to the megapath situation that it could be anywhere on in the chain.

First hop ping will basically tell you if it's a physical connection issue or something on up the food chain that you have no control over.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Then it's not anything to do with me, because first ping hope is almost always around 100, sometimes 60-90, and the first 3-5 hops are usually 150 or so. I've got a support ticket in with megapath to fix the routing issue, I did a tracert to my local town's website 7 miles away and, I kid you not, it went to Dallas, California (3 diff cities in California), then back across to Chicago, Pittsburgh, and DC, before coming BACK west to me in Virginia.

radworm · EVDO User Joined: 04 May 2009 Posts: 31 Location: Indiana

All you need to do is run a #10 awg copper ground wire from your satellite/antenna mount to the the service meter enclosure that I see in your picture. My best friend is an electrician and helped me with this. I grounded mine to a service disconnect that runs to our house backup generator. You can double check me by doing a Google search for proper electrical grounding listed in the NEC (National Electricial Contractors) code book. You should be able to pick up everything you need at Lowe's or Home Depot for about $20-$30 dollars. They make a nice wire clamp that screws onto the corner of the enclosure box. You can get a ground screw to mount to the satellite mount. I would NOT drive a new ground rod. For one, this can be a pain in the a$$ since you will likely hit gravel, rock, tree roots, etc. Second you have to still run a #6 awg copper wire from the rod back to the house ground (check the NEC code book if you don't believe me). Another thing is to make sure you have a lightning arrester mounted in your cable run to protect your router/modem.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Thanks for the info, I have a friend with some electrician skills coming this weekend to help me out and I'll have him do it as you recommended unless he suggests otherwise.

The problem for me with mounting an arrester within the coax run is that the cable is already run through a hole in my wall (punched clean through and caulked) and, as I understand it, the arrester has to be mounted in a gap between 2 coax cables, outside the residence, and then itself grounded as well. To do this, I would have to buy a new coax cable, connect it up to the grid, re-route both it and the previous 50 foot cable to meet up properly where I could mount the junction box on the wall, and then either convince my friend to drive 250 miles up here to help me out with the exact same grounding issue again or pay an electrician to do it for me.

I simply do not trust myself to do this aspect of the installation properly, no matter how simple it may seem to some of you, this part is not at all simple to me.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Anyone have any idea what could be causing my Ec/Io spikes? They're so bad right now I can barely stay connected (every 5-30 seconds, -14 all the way up to -31.5 which is the max), after a full 24 hour period of the connection not dropping once.

bigsilverhotdog · EVDO User Joined: 08 Jul 2009 Posts: 57

Moving the grid a few degrees seems to have helped a little, is -6.5 or so average the best I'm going to get for Ec/Io? I'd like to get it down to at least -4.5 or if not that, at least stabilize it at -6.5 so it doesn't spike up above -10, which seems to be causing me most of my problems. I've got a fairly strong RSSI of about -90 now and it holds steady.

colebert · EVDO Junkie Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 170

Let it sit for a bit so you can get a longer term view of this tower. How are your speeds and pings after 2 days?