Years ago when I worked at Warwick Electronics, they had an anechoic chamber (for sound testing, I don’t remember if it was also for RF). The cleaning people called it “the funny room” and refused to go in there because they couldn’t hear if someone came up behind them. Those things cost a fortune and are often constructed so they can be detached from the building and taken with if the company moves. Warwick also had a room set up as a suburban living room, it was named “the living room”. I believe Warwick was the last company to make TV sets in the U.S., they had plants in Arkansas and Mexico. This was 1976, for those of you who think U.S. companies making things in Mexico is a recent thing. It was a division of Whirlpool and was sold off to Sanyo shortly after I left. They also made Thomas Organs and Moog Synthesizers.
A couple of the companies I worked for sent equipment out to test labs in Salt Lake City for FCC emissions testing. In addition to indoor chambers, they had an outdoor range with mountains on 3 sides. Later a few test labs sprung up in the Chicago area and we stopped going out to SLC. I recall scratching my head because they took Coke breaks in the morning instead of coffee breaks, always super nice folks though. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of George Skorup Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 12:23 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas I've been in the chambers at Cambium HQ several times. Kinda creepy. You can hear everything from switching power supplies to your own heart beat. Drives me nuts. On 1/4/2017 12:08 PM, Chuck McCown wrote: And everything was on elevated 100% dielectric towers. If I was going to do it again, I would no a nearfield range inside an anechoic chamber. That is how all the big boys roll these days. From: Chuck McCown Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 11:03 AM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas Yes computer controlled turn table with all the official stack of HP test gear. From: Cameron Crum Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 10:56 AM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas Did you have a turn table and the whole works or did you just do it manually? On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Chuck McCown <ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> > wrote: I have no idea if Lanbowan actually does field testing. I would think you have to do some because there are always reality issues that pop up when using a simulation. But as far as exhaustive testing or third party testing, I have no idea. I had my own far field test range and I used IEEE testing methodology. So I knew that my performance in the field would be better than my published specs. My guess is that KP will just get absorbed in to the L-COM product list. More importantly, L-COM absorbed the customer list. From: Ken Hohhof Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 10:06 AM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas I won’t ask if they will sell your design to someone else for money. But I will ask about testing. Do they qualify the antennas with lab and open field testing, or is that your responsibility to do yourself or send out to an independent lab? ----------------------------------------------------- I know you can test antennas yourself, and the KP guys talked about doing a lot of testing which I think they sent out. But I see a lot of spec sheets that seem like they came right off a simulation program, often without qualifying if the numbers and plots are typical or guaranteed performance. But then I also see elevation/azimuth plots that are so ugly they must be real because no marketing guy would make them up. (I think there’s one Ubiquiti omni that struck me that way.) A lot of antenna vendors, I think we take their amazing gain numbers with a grain of salt, subtracting a fudge factor for marketing exuberance. And without patterns and frequency plots, just a gain number isn’t that useful. Looking at published elevation/azimuth plots for dual pol omnis, the gains are often different for the two polarizations. And with the 5 GHz wideband antennas, there may be a sweet spot at some frequency, and in any case the gain usually drops off several dB in the lower sub-bands. I also remember the KP guys went through what they called Gen I, II and III versions, influenced a lot by their interactions with Cambium. I think the Cambium guys informed them that gain wasn’t everything in a sector antenna, you also needed a certain F/B ratio and sidelobe suppression. There’s also the issues of null fill and downtilt. Electrical downtilt is especially relevant in an omni, since you can’t really do mechanical downtilt if you want it to be an omni. Bottom line, a lot of buyers look only at two numbers: price, and gain. From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:44 AM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas Yes, Lanbowan will sell to anyone with money. They will custom build or alter anything for money. Easy company to work with. From: Mathew Howard Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 9:08 AM To: af Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas I think all (or at least most) of the KP sectors are pretty heavily customized, as I haven't seen anyone else selling the equivalents, but I suspect that they are all manufactured by Lanbowan... whether or not the internals are any different than what Lanbowan will sell to anyone else, I don't know. The dual polarity 5ghz omnis they sell are certainly the same thing as Chuck's (there are probably at least half a dozen different companies selling those in the US... including L-Com, interestingly). On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 9:07 AM, Colin Stanners <cstann...@gmail.com <mailto:cstann...@gmail.com> > wrote: >From my bit of research I believe that KP dual-frequency "combo" sectors are >their own design / build, although I've never asked them. On Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Chuck McCown <ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> > wrote: Most of KP stuff came from Lanbowan. Same place I got my customized omni antennas. L-Com does similar, just import from China. So just adding Lanbowan to L-Com is not much of a change it doesn’t seem to me. I don’t think either company actually built anything themselves. From: That One Guy /sarcasm Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 5:42 PM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas L-Com/KP presents some interesting potential On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 5:11 PM, Chuck McCown <ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> > wrote: Must be these guys: http://www.infiniteelectronics.com/ From: Timothy Steele Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 4:03 PM To: af@afmug.com <mailto:af@afmug.com> Subject: [AFMUG] Infinite Electronics Acquires KP Performance Antennas http://www.antennasonline.com/main/news/infinite-electronics-acquires-kp-performance-antennas/ -- If you only see yourself as part of the team but you don't see your team as part of yourself you have already failed as part of the team.
