B525s-65a Aerial Options

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buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#272853 20-Jul-2020 15:39

I'm trying (struggling) to setup some RBI in Waitomo and currently have a Huawei B525s-65a which came with an ANT-205. I managed to get 3G at 1-2 bars intermittantly. After reading some of the posts here I obtained a second ANT-205 so I could run them both at 45/315. Unfortunately it didn't get any better, I now have a stable 1 bar 3G but its basically useless other than being able to get notifications to your phone. I have 4 cell towers in the region (closest is 10km's away) but all have a hill in front of them.

My question is, do I bail out of the trial period now (we're only in the house for another 6 months) or do I try a stronger Yagi? We don't necessarily require the ability to stream Netflix but it would be nice to be able to scroll social media, Google search & make use of the VoIP option (saving us having to pay for a landline aswell).

How do I tell if the B525s is 700MHz or 1800MHz? The Specs here list both : https://mobilenave.com/huawei-b525-specification/#Huawei_B525_Specs

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hsvhel

1237 posts

Uber Geek

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#2526068 20-Jul-2020 15:44

Vodafone RBI?

Im going through a similar exercise with an antenna although not apples for apples

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mentalinc

3233 posts

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#2526080 20-Jul-2020 15:59

Maybe use the ubiquity tool to figure out height etc needed for the location?

https://link.ui.com/#

And do you have it lined up "perfectly" tool may help a bit with that as well..

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buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2526082 20-Jul-2020 15:59

Wireless Nation. I think they use the Vodafone coverage, I could well be wrong though

buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2526339 21-Jul-2020 08:06

mentalinc:

Maybe use the ubiquity tool to figure out height etc needed for the location?

https://link.ui.com/#

And do you have it lined up "perfectly" tool may help a bit with that as well..

That link is awesome! Thank you for that. I can see now that there is one cell tower that has a clear line with no hills (not where its currently pointed at) so I'll sort that on Sunday.

buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2530707 29-Jul-2020 13:00

I had some reasonable success, we now have a low strength but stable 3G. Strangely it worked best with both ANT-205's in the vertical positions. Having them at 45 & 315 degrees made it worse.

Would it be worth trying a Yagi? How do I tell which MHz range to use?

backfiah

219 posts

Master Geek

#2530722 29-Jul-2020 13:48

How far off the tower are you? If not that far, then should have a much better signal with clear line-of-sight. When I did it I had to be quite careful with the alignment, taking into account magnetic vs geographic directions etc.

BarTender

3606 posts

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#2530775 29-Jul-2020 14:16

You will want to check the polarization for the two antennas.

There are plenty of other smarter folks on here such as @coffeebaron that can help with professional antenna installation.

But the main trick is to have your phone connected to the router real time and monitor the RSSI strength when you tweak things.

Also sometimes line of sight doesn't give you the best signal so do try other angles as it could be bouncing off a hill and giving you a better signal.

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buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2530799 29-Jul-2020 14:52

backfiah:

How far off the tower are you? If not that far, then should have a much better signal with clear line-of-sight. When I did it I had to be quite careful with the alignment, taking into account magnetic vs geographic directions etc.

9.22km's Map

BarTender:

You will want to check the polarization for the two antennas.

There are plenty of other smarter folks on here such as @coffeebaron that can help with professional antenna installation.

But the main trick is to have your phone connected to the router real time and monitor the RSSI strength when you tweak things.

Also sometimes line of sight doesn't give you the best signal so do try other angles as it could be bouncing off a hill and giving you a better signal.

I had my phone connected to the router but its so slow to update any changes but I'll try watching the RSSI more closely while I'm tweaking it, when I'm back there this weekend

buriedalive

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2534468 4-Aug-2020 12:27

Turns out one of the coax cables was faulty so its only been using one antenna. 3G signal is just slightly more stable with the second antenna disconnected but it does at least explain why the 45/315 setup was worse.

No physical sign of cable damage plus it was the newer cable of the two, so who knows. Will order another one, re-orientate the two antenna's correctly and see if I can't get some 4G