I hear people say they can’t do tone alignment all the time and I don’t believe it. Supposedly only 4% of people are tone deaf. Hey, I cannot sing the same note as the person next to me, but I have no trouble doing tone alignment.
When I get such people to use an amplified speaker, I find they suddenly like tone alignment. Also I consistently find bad installs done “by the numbers” that would have been known at the time if the installer used tone alignment. We have lots of problems with multipath here in flat corn belt country, and you can tell right off from the varying, warbling, or mushy tone that something is not right. Sometimes you can also hear that you are aligning on a sidelobe. We also have a ton of wind turbines, which affect the signal in unpredictable ways even if the blades are not directly in the path, especially if there are multiple turbines along the path. You can hear the tone varying in time with the blades spinning. If you are aligning by the numbers, all this will be averaged out. Also since you have constant feedback from the tone, but someone reading you numbers is only going to give you feedback every few seconds, you can do a more exact alignment with tones. With numbers, in reality you are more likely to just be close to the peak not dead on it. You should certainly do linktests and check the SNR before declaring it a successful install, but I really believe installers should be instructed to use tone alignment when it is available. Just like I get climbers who pooh-pooh using a voltmeter to align licensed links, and just want the numbers called out to them. Unless you have dB readout right on the radio, voltmeter on the BNC is the best way, instant feedback, very precise. I especially like how Exalt makes the voltage basically a dB value so you can also tell if you are getting what was calculated. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 1:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] System Release 13.3 available Well you definitely don't want to give them a firmware "update" that removes the feature. But seriously I would permit whatever the tech finds to be easier to align. If they're better with numbers, let them. I personally can't stand the alignment tone since I can't really hear what's better or worse. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Jon Bruce <[email protected]> wrote: How do I convince my installers to use the tone and stop calling the NOC for numbers over the phone? On 1/16/2015 1:26 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: That’s the way I read the release notes as well. Could someone from Cambium please clarify? I agree, it true, that’s a show stopper. Installers will kill me if we have to go back to reading numbers over the phone. From: Mark Radabaugh Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 12:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] System Release 13.3 available It's still says 'no alignment tone' on the release notes. That's a show stopper for me. Dear Cambium - that's not a minor bug and should not be in a release. My apologies if I read the release note wrong. Mark On Jan 16, 2015, at 12:57 PM, Ryan Ray <[email protected]> wrote: After having my .5 frequencies lost on sm's during the 13.2 upgrade I'm holding off Sent while mobile On Jan 15, 2015, at 7:11 PM, George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting) <[email protected]> wrote: Anyone brave enough yet? I've been too busy to play with firmware lately. On 1/15/2015 12:13 PM, Matt Mangriotis wrote: We have released 13.3 officially today. I know many of you have been participating in the beta for this, and want to thank you for all the feedback which has helped make it better… https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/files/pmp450/ We also have a thread dedicated to discussion of this release: http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/PMP-450/System-Release-13-3-Now-Avaialble/m-p/37969#U37969 Download and enjoy all the new functionality this brings to the platform! Thanks again, Matt
