I’m helping a friend redo their roof setup. At the moment there’s a FA antenna and a short length of LMR400 coax into the underside of a weatherproof box attached to the mast. This goes into a Uputronics SAW preamp and then back out the underside and down into the house. Here are photos from a previous discussion.
From his scans and some testing, it appears that the dark blue filter before the preamp will improve numbers and range a little. It’s also a chance to perhaps explore an alternative antenna and/or preamp, and probably this time a box with entry from the top and bottom to avoid right-angle connectors or tight turns or pigtails.
My own setup indoors next to a window has these components attached directly to the antenna using couplers, as shown below.
I believe this is considered optimum in terms of mounting as close to the antenna as possible. It could not be any closer.
So I was wondering, has anyone used this kind of setup on a roof installation? I imagine it would need self-amalgamating tape over the connections, and then the whole lot resting in a box which seals around it to protect it from the elements, and provide some stability, since the connectors would be at the mercy of movement.
You can see on my indoor setup I had to cable tie the preamp (and coax further down) to keep them from flexing the connectors. The end result on the roof would be a box with coax coming from the underside, no need to loop coax in and out.
On the otherhand, maybe this method is not ideal and has a high risk of damage, and the original box idea with a short length of coax to the antenna is the better choice. Something small enough to avoid excess wind capture in either case.
Has anyone deployed outdoors using this direct coupled approach, and, if so, how did you handle weatherproofing and preventing flexing of the connectors?
And if you wanted to upgrade the components themselves, any thoughts on a different antenna or bias-tee-enabled preamp which can outperform the FA and Uputronics? So far they have both been solid performers. I’m going to look at Uputronics ceramic filter, back in the day that had superior performance, but not looked in a while.