Directional antenna range..

[bsr]

This sounds impossible to me, but is there a way to make a direction anntena go 3 miles without any kind of range extenders in between ??

 

[Fiveohhh]

if you had line of sight and good technical know how I'm sure you could. I read an article awhile ago about a group of guys doing 5mi I think, but the project wasn't very fcc friendlyl.

 

[Dowfen]

I've got direct experience with some of the directional antennas you can find on like Hdcom.com and have not had very good results. If you do go that route, make sure you have line of site.

The main thing holding them back, in my experience, was the cable. Even very low loss cable took loads of my signal strength away. These consumer access points and bridges all have passive antennas so the signal can get lost quickly.

If you want something that's guaranteed to work, line of site or not, I'd get something like the 3com ethernet bridge that uses power over ethernet and not have all the hassle.

The only problem...they're about 900 bucks a piece.

Just my experience, nothing more...

Eric

 

[JackMDS]

With clear line of sight, and high enough to compensate for earth curvature it is possible.

 

[ktwebb]

WIth the correct heighth and enough juice by both power output and antenna gain, 3 miles is easy. Many many jobs of links over 15 miles. We had a 21 mile job that we backed down to 5.5 Mb for stabilities sake but the bridges were associating at 11 Mb, albeit with too many retries to depend on. 3 miles is pretty easy but as Jack said, you'd need to compensate and raise your antennas above the fray. At 3 miles, more for the barriers and obstructions than earth curvature though. Tree's buildings and what not because at that distance you need clear line of sight, and freznel zone clearance as well. If you have one side of the link at a higher elevation then you might be able to get away without using towers.