Morning gents,
So, following my external antenna and coax flooding in the rains over Christmas here, I’ve been running with a small “spider” ant in the center of the attic, plus a HabAmp.
Stats were pretty good, covering 90% of my expected range based on that range website who’s name eludes me at the moment.
Average range was c220 miles, all lookiong rather good.
Gain was set to 38.6 or so in Mut, Peak was c-2.0.
Got my antenna put on the roof last night, c20:00.
N type - F-type connector, to c7’ Wf100.
Whole connector assembly covered in self amalgamating tape.
In line-sat-amp-in-tube removed altogether, so have a straight run from the ant to the habAmp.
Looking at the SNR, I was showing reduced noise, and really low peaks, so I cranked gain up to the oft-successful 44.5…
Seems to have improved things a bit, but still nearly 50% of what I had before.
My range “compass” and the plots on the maps certainly seem to cover more directions, so a) this suggests the ant is doing what I wanted (mounted above the roof line, so has better 360 view), and b) these results are what I expected in that regard, so seems the ant is connected successfully?
So:
- Shall I just keep increasing the gain, or does the current performance suggest an issue - aside from the gain being cranked down from before?
- Is there a logical requirement to increase gain if you increase the size of the antenna, more gain to “drive” it or something?
*EDIT - if there was an issue with the an connection, and it was just using the coax etc as an ant, I’d expect:
a) No increase in “diection” coverage
b) stats to be worse than this
So hopefully it isnt that? (It’s taken me weeks to get this pig ant on the roof! )
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1KIXisuditI8H-w8M2BHDGtgu0MXp5_1fvVfzNrbh1GQ/pub?w=960&h=720