 Welcome to the RF elements unlicensed podcast. I am Caleb Nowher and we're joined here with tosses I identify as an ultra horn Alexi. What's going on my ma'am? Hey Caleb. How are you man? How's it going? You like my shirt like my shirt? I do like your shirt So finally made it. I have like a palette outside of all these RF elements shirts that didn't make it to the show So yeah, I'm lucky. We took them took them what three extra weeks after the show for them to finally get delivered Yeah, something like that Good job DHL. We're very proud of the quality service you provide. So That's our new bit when we just trash them when they we go you've been unlicensed So anyway, nah man things are good here, I think real fall is finally set in it is cold It is damp. It's in the 50s, which for here is kind of chilly this early So I'm super excited going to get ready and whip up a batch of chili or something and get that jam rolling Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm happy that cold weather is coming here, too. So that's all good and Yeah, it's it's nice to see the season change like it's like two days long here You see some colors on the trees and everything is gone Exactly before rain and swamp and cold season starts. So before we hop into this We'll surround our call to action to our folks listening to this right now Absolutely. Make sure you like listen and subscribe to our channel here on YouTube or anywhere You download your audio podcast like Google Spotify and Apple Cool, cool. So this week, I thought we'd talk about is conversation We saw fire up on one of the forums and it was basically saying hey, you know We know our fellow misses great, but what about such and such horns? You know, what are the differences? So I thought we would talk about today is that not all horns are created equal Not all sectors are created equal because there's some sort of side conversations And we've hit up a lot of these points so far But I thought it would be good to bring focus to some of these ideas talk about, you know The other horns that are out there maybe maybe not calling anyone out specifically But to say hey, there are real differences and the thing is important that you guys understand what those are Yeah, definitely. I mean again, I think you sum it up with that, you know initial phrase, right? Not all horns are created equal and a lot of people, you know tend to think that, you know Our antennas are so great just because it's a horn and that's not the case I mean that is part of it, but there are many different types of horns out there, right? The ours is a scalar horn specifically And it does still take a lot of time to engineer the horn properly in order to get Everything that you see from the performance out of our horn antennas at the flat gain and the balance beams and all the other stuff So it's not just because it's a horn You're gonna get all that noise isolation and all the great things that you hear because they are definitely not all created equal Definitely not and it's you know It's really easy when a popular like ours gets product and you know, even though you know horn technology in it itself It's a very old technology, you know But we were in the first in this industry to capitalize on it build design Engineer and ship it to serve the needs your unlicensed 5a customers and really work this industry So but you know like any product that gets really popular There's a lot of me to me twos out there and it's not just your typical sort of overseas knockoffs You know, you always see that sort of thing Chinese knockoffs and they take it and make something that was kind of identical But it ends up being a lot lower costs and stuff So I thought we point out some of those differences, but it's not just them There's established manufacturers of you know radio equipment and also just antennas in general that you know Want to jump on this this train that we fired up So let's kind of hammer into some details when you're evaluating the differences between them You know, what are some of the first things you look at from just even a spec sheet perspective? I know pattern pattern is probably the most obvious one You want to think about because it's like hey just got a horn. It doesn't mean, you know, no loaves and it's like well Not necessarily Yeah, definitely again, there's you know, we've we've mentioned it or at least I've mentioned it multiple times on this show Right that you know, there's there is no single antenna parameter That you know dominates everything, you know, all the Important parameters for good wireless need to be considered and put into the design of your antenna, right? So gain, of course, you know customer requires a certain amount of gain based on the distances that they're trying to cover Right, but you know maintaining that gain across the entire spectrum is something that's really important Again, we're in the kind of multiple in multiple out right the memo world of communications Equipment today So it's also important to preserve that good performance on both polarities or even all four if it's four by four And as you know, again, we kind of go into the future, you know As as that grows it's important to have all of those parameters met The beam performance the beam shape VSWR right front to back ratio cross pole isolation. There's so many different things and You know a lot of manufacturers in the past it's getting better. Hopefully it's because of the pressure You know, maybe that we're creating When we when we design our products, you know to make sure that you know, we're not selling a single point You know people used to look for the best front to back ratio. That's all they cared about the highest gain That's all they cared about we try and bring it all Well balanced and in one package, you know, so that's really really, uh, you know You know four or five of the most important parameters that you should be looking at Not singling out a single one, but making sure that all of those parameters are sound in any antenna that you buy Exactly. So, you know, you look at the spec sheets and you're like, okay, let's do extra actual comparisons You'll see ours very clean cut on the main low very high beam efficiency No side loaves and back loaves, you know one of our big points that we always make all the time But you look at some of these others and you're like, man, you know for horn This is this has got some wings on it says got some little side loaves It's got some back loaves, which you really shouldn't expect when you're looking at something like that So that's important, you know, if they manage to show you the beam patterns on both Polarizations, you know, you'll see that they're not equal and that's so important in this memo world that we live in It is so so important that your horizontal and your vertical polarizations have very equivalent beams because otherwise you're going to get Chain mismatches janky connections. None of that's cool stuff. So The the flat frequency range across and the frequency range offered, you know, that's a really important thing People don't always think about, you know, our horns go from 5 1 up to either 6 gig or to 6.4 Depending on which model that you're looking at Um, but a lot of these don't a lot of them start topping out 5 8 5 9 and as we start expanding into the lower 6 And you know, those radios start coming out. That's going to be a very important to consider when you're looking at, you know, swapping out moving across in the ecosystem um the Uh vs wr, you know, a lot of times I won't show it till they said return loss negative 30 db Or you know, they'll set one fixed factor, but not show you that across the whole frequency range either So those are those are spec sheet differentials that are really important Um, but you know, that doesn't always tell the whole story. I mean, you know, there's things That as a company we focus on Because it's what we do, you know, this is our sole job make quality antennas, you know And it's not just horns. We do the sectors and the other stuff and the dishes and everything But in the end, that's what we do. We do antennas. We do it ral That is our focus is what we care about So it's not as a me too kind of thing or we might have a suite of 10,000 and 10 of products and cables and connectors and mounts and all this other sort of stuff. So You know, it is what we do. So there's there's that sign of things. Yeah I think it's also important for, you know, there there's You know, having a good product goes beyond just the product itself, right? There's a support for the product, right? Whether it's, you know, directly from the company, like ourselves, the way we support our product out in the open, very Transparent with all the issues that we've had in the past and how we resolved them I think that's something that's extremely important as well because, you know Our product, you know, our horn has changed from day one, right? The design has changed slightly You know, the the usability of the product has changed based on all the feedback, right? So it's not always, you know, the best product out the gate, but it's, you know, I think a company's ability to kind of, you know, improve that product and listen to the feedback from the users out there And put that, you know, heart and soul back into the next rev of the product. That's something I think, you know, people should really look for and and, you know, you typically see much more support for active products, right? You know, radios and stuff like that, routers and switches, they have firmware, they have, you know Software they have all these other things that, you know, let's say could go wrong So I think, you know, a lot of the focus on kind of that type of support is for those products and You know, non-actor products like antennas and cables and stuff like that I don't I don't know that, you know, all the manufacturers really pay that much attention to trying to make it better It's like, hey, it's a cable. What do you want? You know So that's I mean, that's that's something that you really you really have to consider in an all-round package for from a manufacturer No matter what it is they're selling Yeah, and that's so much the specialization of focus of what we're doing So it's not like, oh, we need this because we really want to push this sexy product over here You know, it's it's what we do So, you know, you guys tell us that the stainless bolts need to change and stuff like that then we do it So some things could happen quick. Some things may take a little bit, but you know Soon Better late than ever Yeah, better late than ever. So Okay, we're still gonna say we're right, but we're gonna totally change this so um But um, you know, that's important and it's the the view towards the industry So like ecosystem, I think a lot of times people don't fully appreciate with the twist port setup how you know People are like, well, we don't really change brands that much or you know, we don't change form factors I mean, but we see this a lot and we end up in those conversations as they're going from one manufacturer to the other or Even same manufacturer different form factor, you know If you've got a horn antenna that's only built for one particular form factor Well, you know, that's great and it might work okay in some circumstances and stuff But you know, when this company in question might have a bit of a focus issue sometimes or You know the eol that one radio product line because it's a small percentage of the sales now You know, none of your horns are going to work on that anymore. So Um, or you're wanting to go next gen You know, we we've talked about this next gen upgrade and say, hey, all you've got to do is swap the radios You leave your horns in place and you're ready to roll So the twist port adapter gives us that flexibility to work in that ecosystem and say, you know, you want a next gen or you just Stock out. Okay. I cannot get this particular radio skew for several months Like we've been through this year, you know Things have cleared up a little bit for now, but you never know and it's going to be a little dodgy for probably next, what two years? yeah, so You know the flexibility that the twist port in our horn ecosystem gives you means that when you got to pivot you can pivot Yeah No, and I think you brought up a really good point that even you know I didn't really consider until until you kind of mentioned it is really the you know, the the long term Buy-in from the manufacturer that you're you know buying from us It's it's quite obvious that RF elements is here to stay right and that you know The the horn technology and all this other stuff is is something that we're all in on and yeah, you may have some other You know, like I said, uh manufacturers come around and try and let's say jump on the the bandwagon and come out with a horn It's like but are they really going to support it, right? I mean if it doesn't sell they're going to stop making it, right? So, you know, that's again something that you need to consider not just the support but like the long term Support of the product being supplied, you know, because you know as a wisp once you kind of make that investment You make that jump into whatever it is or a radio platform an antenna a router platform a switch platform Whatever it is You need to have some sort of security right from the manufacturer that you're You're investing all your time and money in and doing this stuff to make sure they're going to be there All right that they're going to continue to support the product and evolve the product and stuff like that So that's really something something important to look at. You're right Yeah, and I think a lot of people when they think about their deployments Especially when they start out and they're relatively young, you know, you don't think about your tower build past the construction So you put up your tower you put up your four ap's your eight or 12 Whatever that you do and then be like, all right. Well, this is a way that it's always going to be You know, these antennas are always be here these radios all be here and this is never going to change But you know, and I'm the one guy or a couple guys doing this So, you know, if I do have to change something I'll figure it out But when you start talking about standardization the product and installation methods when you're across hundreds of towers and multiple states and stuff like that You're bringing in remote crews or you you acquire a company and say this is our new standard of construction We see a lot of that where we're you know, we have an established customer They purchase another wisp and then we do a lot of training with this wisp on our purchase Hey, this is our standard we've built once you guys to walk them through and explain. This is why we do this This is why we design this way You know because they're standardized on across the board And if you don't know if your manufacturer is going to be supporting this product a year or two years down the road Or you can't purchase it anymore then that makes it standardization of product and process is really difficult Yeah, yeah, it's it's always hard to be the new guy also, right? I mean again It takes a lot to kind of build that trust in the user base and stuff like that so Yeah, it's uh, you know It's a long road It's a long road for sure no matter where you are in the spectrum of you know product that you offer For sure for sure and that goes like, you know, there's always the cost question Everybody knows cost is super important for everything, you know, obviously, but you know, it's all the times We're like, well, you know, I can get these horns from alibaba for like, you know A quarter of the cost or you know, even a standard established manufacturer You know one of the first things I say is like look get them take a look at them You know throw them up in the field see the rf performance But look at other things like what are your mechanicals like what are your adjustments like what are your materials like You know if you do that spray foil sort of on the inside and then after a year or two that breaks down That's no bueno, you know, that's not good That's not good or you know your adjustment points You know seize up after a little while and you can't do anything or You know, you can take a look and feel of it and be like this thing's not going to last in the real world for a real amount of time So, you know, that's always a really important part and that's something again back to the focus where we're always improving You know, we've we've made modifications. Yeah, most of the modifications we made in the last year Aren't necessarily to the rf side of things because we're solid there But it's like, you know what we need a bigger stronger mount. We need to change these bowls We want to change this adjustment system because you know what we have works well But it could work better and that's one of the goals is continuous improvement for sure So definitely, you know and and all this stuff really applies to our sectors as well So we've talked about the sectors before but you know, our array sector is You know, not necessarily known for but it's a really important part of our product offering There are times where a sector makes sense So when you're dealing again with these clients that are really spread out or they're really over a far distance These rural areas you're just trying to eke out as much as you can and don't necessarily need the density Or the really good rf coverage from the horns You know, these sectors do do play a lot of sense or do make a lot of sense. Excuse me And you know, when we talk about swapping sectors, a lot of people are like well I already got this sector and what do I need yours? You know, we've done so much work with these sectors to make them As efficient as you could possibly make a patch array sector So we put in things like the back shield and we've re-engineered the patches to be really high quality To give us the balance beams as much as we can to give us the balance for the Polarizations to cut the side loaves back cut the back loaves back off as much as you really can on a patch array sector so we focus a lot on quality because you know, it's When you get these new radios and you move from your old school in radios or single chain or your in radio Memo devices to these new ac unit cores or whatever cores you might be running And you're starting to move from 8x up to 10x and stuff You really need all the performance out of your sector that you can possibly get Because there's no point in putting this nice fancy high-end radio on top of a really poor quality sector You know, it's like putting bad tires on a sports car or bad gas. It's just you're shooting yourself into play Some of them would be like putting square tires on a sports car. They're so bad, you know So or you're like, hey, I had these, you know old in radios I was pushing 50 mags to room and you've got goofy Bolton kits or wings welded onto the side and stuff like that And then you put a lte radio on there and they're an ax radio and you're like, hey, it doesn't perform to these high rates Well, it's because your antenna is not doing what it needs to do. So, you know, much like all horns are not equivalent You know the same goes to all sectors for sure. Yeah, and that's uh, again, that's something That we've talked about and and we've kind of seen over time, right? So we've seen the huge progression in From the radio standpoint over time, right from like, you know, rnkill cards to cb3s to now we're, you know E pmp 3000 4000 air fibers and all these really cool things coming up from amosa and everybody else so the radios have evolved from Basically, you know a, you know, just a standard modulating radio, right to stuff with gps synced at tdma and all these These are the things but antennas are pretty much state static, right? It's just been sectors and it's been the same thing The only progress we've really kind of seen in sector technology is going from single pole To dual pole and now to four by four quad pole antennas, it really hasn't Been been much innovation there and not much attention paid to the actual antenna itself I mean, this is kind of how the whole RF armor shield thing happened, right? It's like, you know If you didn't see it like we saw it back then we're like, wait a minute, you know, these we know these antennas weren't great But it's like people are spending money to put this aftermarket something on there, you know, to Make it work the way it should work, you know, that's just it's just wrong. It's just wrong And uh, yeah, so as these radios have progressed and gotten better specifically the higher modulation rates requiring the higher in snr It really required better antennas, you know, again Fixating on all those specific things we mentioned earlier about horns still apply to sectors good front to back for co-location You know flat gain that can you know across the entire spectrum so you can safely change channels and and not drop signal intensity Um having balanced beams having both the vertical and horizontal beam pattern overlap and look the same to give you that good Chain to chain performance, right, you know good cross pole isolation that becomes more and more important as time goes on Especially as you know Modulation rates go up and stuff like that. So there's there's a lot of these parameters that are really really important And they've totally been ignored for the past decade plus basically so, you know It's good that we're we're doing something for that market as you mentioned earlier, you know I think so many people see kind of the us presence of RF elements and everything on social media They just kind of think it's a us-based thing, you know, and it's not it's there's a global market out there Right and that global market is very price competitive, right? And you know some of these markets are you know Five or six plus years behind, you know where we are now, right? So they are where we were six or seven years ago, right? And uh, you know sector technology is just probably the better bet for them at the moment And they're slowly, you know learning and progressing and they're they're realizing that you know slight more investment now You know to have horn antennas is is worth it for the future and stuff like that and uh, yeah So, you know as time goes on things need to progress and again, it's not just the radio Everything has to follow. I mean even at some point pigtails and cables, right? They need to improve as well So all these things have to be considered Yeah, it used to be you could just get any sort of janky RF connector and cable that you needed and now You know as we move these really high-end systems It's really evident that you can't you know, you got to focus on quality We actually get that question a lot, you know Hey, what should we use and there's a lot of good vendors out there for the cables? The you know, we use a lot of shireen That's you know, you grew up using them. I grew up using them They made us a bunch of custom stuff in the past. They're they're a great man They're definitely not the only ones, you know, it's you know, get a good quality Cable don't try to save a buck there a buck, you know, you go cheap on the cables again It's like bad bad shoes bad tires and bad beds. You're just gonna wreck yourself in the end. So yeah, yeah, exactly And that's that's like kind of like one of my fears is you know, because we're so really, you know Into this industry and it staying healthy becoming healthier and growing and stuff I worry about these new bands like six gigahertz, right? I'm already starting to see posts with some tests six gigahertz stuff on omnis I'm just like No, please. No, let's let's look at, you know, what what we know What we did in five gigahertz and I say we I don't mean us rf elements I mean us the wisp industry Y'all are just as important to the success Of everything because you're seeing the you know the the methods and the right things to do and you're actually Implementing them now and taking more pride in what your networks are like and how they perform And it's again, it's it's scary for me to see some of these in a really old school You know techniques and and methodologies, you know saying hey Well, we have brand new, you know six gigahertz spectrum and there's no noise out there because nobody's using it yet Basically, so yeah, we could use whatever we want because noise isn't an issue. It will be it's coming for you It's looking for you and it will find you so Let's let's let's build six gigahertz right from the beginning Yes, yes, and it's you know, we saw it happen when the dfs stuff actually opened up and got to be legal It was so quiet everyone's like sweet, you know, we've got a ton of frequency Everything's great and then everyone sort of did the same things they were doing before just on lower power levels and dealing with the dfs side and then you know, they say, you know, it's all trash so We got a ton of potential with that six gig band. We just need to do things do things the right way and I guess the other point that you kind of mentioned that uh was the cost But also the roi like a lot of people get hung up on cost But they don't necessarily look at what it turns on roi or return on investment So let's just say you go from, you know, your your janky sloppy sector to a good sector to a horn or whatever it may be You know, if you can add You know, your your client load gets cleaner, right? Your modulations go up or you can use a smaller channel Add another access point because you split them up, you know Let's say you put five more customers on the ap 10 more customers, whatever that may be Look and see how quickly that pays off and what you'll find is in a relatively short amount of time That little bit of money that you spend up front to improve your antenna tech and everything else Is going to pay off for you in spades as the years progress. Yeah Definitely, I mean, I know again, everybody's business models are different and it depends on what you're charging and stuff like that but yeah, I mean, you know, uh an antenna isn't Uh typically the the largest portion of your, you know, capex, right for for putting up a tower Or a new ap, right? So you just consider, you know, just one new customer over a few months, you know Kind of pays it all back, right? So it's worth it if you can add, you know, even 10 percent capacity or 10 percent more capacity Um, I mean, it's it should pay off in in no time really Yeah, for sure for sure. So I guess to wrap it up I mean, you know as as much as people don't really necessarily see it either You know, these things apply to the dishes as well, you know, it's Like I said before, you know, when we we started Look, you know, when I started working here and looked at the number of ultra dishes we sold I was blowing away at how many it is and you know, a lot of it's for point-to-point But a lot of it's for those high-end client connections trying to people max those distances out max the qualities connections And you know, when you're looking at dishes, it's so cheap to make just a junky ripoff dish Right? It's a piece of stamp metal and a feed horn As long as it looks like a feed horn, a lot of people are like, yeah, that looks like a dish and I save 40 50 80 percent on the cost I'm just going to roll with it, right? So Unfortunately, the dishes are just where it's so easy to kind of get wrecked. So yeah And I mean the majority that the noise floor comes from basically your cpes that are out there, right? So that's probably the hardest thing for us to fix is because you know, all these cpes nowadays are kind of integrated, right? So you're kind of stuck at the mercy of these really low cost, you know, poorly engineered antenna solutions that are on these integrated cpes and and like you said There are customers who have, you know, somehow worked it into their business models to use our ultra dish and now We have kind of the lower cost starter dish Available out there to really start cleaning up the noise floor even more By again having at least a well balanced, you know, thoughtful antenna on the cpe side where nowadays it's just It's pretty bad still. It's pretty bad Yeah, yeah for sure. So You know, all these things matter and we've gotten a little preachy here But you know, it really matters, you know, not for just for us, but you know for for the sake of everyone for the sake of your business, you know The the best way to blow yourself up on these big bills as you grow is to use a low quality antenna And just really shoot yourself in the foot in terms of what your performance can be from the the radio perspective and everything So, you know, not every horn, you know is the same not every sector is the same not every dish is the same So and you know, if you want to do some comparisons, uh, are we going to talk about what those differences are? Hey, please feel free to reach out to us We'll have this conversation with you or whoever else you want to talk to so You know, we're we're really easy to find you can find us We're on facebook a lot, you know in the various swiss groups and stuff RF elements, we have our own pages the main page the english page asia spanish Now africa, you know, we've got those rfv pages available for everybody Really easy to track us down on email. Caleb at RF elements.com toss us at RF elements.com here contact site on the website We are we're everywhere If you got any of these questions, do you want to compare these differences and get our perspective, you know Let us know if you want to get everyone else's perspective, you know That thread that was out there had a lot of people's perspective on stuff and we like to see it, you know The the good stuff and the bad if there's some Conversation or you know, you think we're wrong about one of these or you want to debate it? Hey, let us know reach out to us and we'll be more than happy to have that conversation. So absolutely That being said toss us you got anything else to share with the people today No, uh, it's rainy out. So it's kind of one of those down days and stuff like that Getting cold out and stuff like that. I'm getting excited for the future of this podcast You know, we've reached out to a bunch of you and we've kind of put it out there Like if you want to join the podcast, please do so we've had a bunch of people respond that they want to get on board So I'm looking forward to having more guests here in the future or have have guests in the future on our show So that's exciting. Yeah, let's let's get some more viewpoints different ways to look at stuff And you know, hey, we're not always right. So, you know, maybe let's take a look at it from a different approach And we learned from this too, which is great. So All right, well, let's wrap it up. So Until next time y'all stay horny Stay horny y'all