Lots of good tips! Standard Ubiquiti dish. What kind of scope are you using?
Jaime Solorza On Sun, Apr 29, 2018, 6:34 AM David Coudron <[email protected]> wrote: > Agreed, > > > > The fastest way we have found is to mount a scope to the dish. The > McCown one should work really well. We made our own version of that due > to way the Jirous dishes are constructed, but the McCown one is like a > little more durable than ours and more of a single person usable type of > thing. With that set up, you might not even have to tweak the link. We > just did three more links yesterday with Mimosa B11s, one was bang on at > -42, the other two we had to fine tune for less than 5 minutes. In the > last couple of weeks, we did 10 other links and 7 of them we didn’t even > have to touch to fine tune, they were within 2-3 dBi of target right way > when linked up. A couple of things we found that really helped: > > 1. Get a small pair of binoculars to find the other tower first on > longer links. This helps you get close first, the scope is so zoomed in, > it takes awhile to find the other tower some times. > 2. Know what your tilt is before going up as you mentioned below, and > then if you can find a part of the bracket that is square to the face of > the dish, use the iHandy app (or a similar one) on the smart phone to set > tilt to the right value before setting azimuth. This has cut the time down > quite a bit as well. > > > > With the Jirous dishes, we can now get our alignment time down on one end > to less than 10 minutes from the time the dish is attached to the pipe. > We get the mounting bracket pinched down tight with the dish aimed in the > general direction, then set tilt with the smartphone, then dial in azimuth > with the scope. If you are using only Jirous dishes, I can send you what > we built, but I think Chuck’s setup is more universal and more durable. > We use vise grips to clamp the scope to the dish, which is more of a 3 > hands rather than 2 hands kind of thing. I think Chuck’s could be done > more easily with one person. We do have two setups thinking we would have > to have folks on both ends at the same time, but since these get so close > as Bill mentioned, you can do it from one end and be pretty confident you > won’t have to revisit that end most of the times. > > > > We have tried smartphone apps and all kinds of compasses to set azimuth > and found they just aren’t accurate at all. The binoculars cuts the > initial tower acquisition time down for longer links dramatically, > however, many of our links are under 10 miles and we don’t really need the > binoculars for them. > > > > Regards, > > > > David Coudron > > > > > > *From:* Af <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Jaime Solorza > *Sent:* Saturday, April 28, 2018 1:14 PM > *To:* Animal Farm <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Alignment idea > > > > Guess I will have buy one then...thanks > > Jaime Solorza > > > > On Sat, Apr 28, 2018, 12:04 PM Bill Prince <[email protected]> wrote: > > The easiest way I've found to align a link was with the McCown scope > thingy. I was able to align a 10 mile 11 GHz link all by my lonesome. Not > quite plug and play, but it was operational within a couple dB of optimal > when I powered it on. I also did a 7.5 mile link that was dead-on when I > powered it on (again, all by myself). > > > > bp > > <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> > > > > On 4/28/2018 11:00 AM, Jaime Solorza wrote: > > Wondering if anyone has used lets say a 5GHz antenna and radio attached > above an 11GHz antenna to find a good starting point for aligning 11GHz > quicker. we have azimuth and elevation coordinates, we have found some > good landmarks on paths to get good of idea of path..... > > I have three links to align next week and need to get is asap....lots of > other projects and quotes I need to get done. > > I did find a low cost USB SA from Trarchy for $995.00 that goes from 4.0 > to 13.xGHz that looks interesting. > > My SA only goes to 6GHz.. > > anyways any other tips would be appreciated. > > > > > Jaime Solorza > > Wireless Systems Architect > > 915-861-1390 > > > >
