Ehhh... Not that strange. Several winters ago, we put in a small POP on the roof of a 2.5 story house in the mountains. You can stand on the roof and see, 17 miles away, the other end of the point, and with binoculars, see the house and all in the middle of wheat fields. This link runs between the peaks of two homes.
from below, you can't find the upper one, because it's hidden between two masses of trees. We put the link in on a foggy day, and got a -73 or so signal on both ends and left happy. Several months later, after some phone calls to complain about irregular bandwidth, we discover that our link is now poor quality, down to about -86 or so. Again, cloudy day and we can't see into the mountains. But, we climbed to both ends, and upon taking stuff apart, appeared to find some moisture in one of the cable ends. Changing it all, we put it back up and it worked ok, but still weak. Shuffling the frequency around found that moving a couple channels over got us a -78 signal. Cool. So, it was left there. About two weeks later, we've got no signal again. But, a big storm is moving in and we're not going to climb ladders in the wild wind, and so tell the customers they'll have to wait till tomorrow. But the next day, the link is up and stronger than it's been in weeks. It came up during the night. So, unable to find anything wrong, we wait it out. This repeats itself twice more. Finally, after another storm clears yet again, we return to the top end, finding nothing wrong, go to the lower end, and having run the link in RM and AND looked at the path in Google Earth, I notice that the lower antenna is NOT aimed at our client's house on the mountain, but across a valley from it and we've been using a reflection off the hillside covered in snow! Each time the snow melted, the link died, but a storm came the NEXT day and put new snow down... A 10 degree or so adjustment in the antenna direction on the lower end results in us finding another "peak" in signal, where it has run perfectly fine ever since... The top antenna is still pointed the same, and even attempts to re-peak it end up exactly pointed as the first when we installed it. I have decided I am just a "practicing WISP" 'cause there ain't no way I'm ever getting this all right, just like a doctor... ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Neofast, Inc, Making internet easy 541-969-8200 509-386-4589 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From: Marco Coelho Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 10:57 AM To: WISPA General List ; motor...@afmug.com Subject: [WISPA] Friday Funny This must be strange propagation month..... We've got a new installer who put a 900 MHz canopy with a yagi pointing to the south side of one of our towers 6 miles away. He gets a 56 signal, but it's really unreliable for some reason. He goes out there again to re-sight, same issues after a couple of days. I happen to look at the map for this customer. Whoa.... He is being shot to the BACK SIDE of a motorola 60° panel 900 MHz AP. 56 Signal from 6 miles away 180° out???? This 900 is there for spot application only. Never intended for over 3 mile shots, especially in the opposite direction! I need a beer. -- Marco C. Coelho Argon Technologies Inc. POB 875 Greenville, TX 75403-0875 903-455-5036 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
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