 Welcome to the RF elements unlicensed bloodcast. I'm Caleb now we're and we're joined here with tassos alexu What's going on with my man? What's happening Caleb? How are you today? Good good live in a life kind of bummed out cuz I got the dentist here in a little bit and have them yell at me with the the myth of flossing so Get into that shortly, but made up by the fact that it's 70 sunny and we might get up to a little cook in the night We'll see how things go. So I'm about fitty-fitty fitty-fitty. So yeah, hopefully this podcast is not on dental hygiene and flossing Yeah, yeah, there's some things I'm really good at and some things we probably want to get to do too deep into so yeah Cool man. So this week. I thought what we would talk about are some myths Misconceptions and misunderstandings that are common in the wisp industry that we see a lot. Um, honestly, I'm just happy I got through that Didn't completely fumble it, but it's a tongue twister. It is it is so We see a lot of these pop up and maybe what we'll do is maybe like a little series of these Or as they come up we'll come and revisit some of them or something like that But thought it would be good to give our insight into some of these and give people some good info So I think one of your favorite ones that you've talked about especially to us, you know internally is the whole myth of More gain equals more better, you know People's answers like I need the biggest antenna. I gotta have the most gain But the real world doesn't always work out like that So I thought I'd throw you that softball to start running with here. Yeah, I mean, there's there's a few things So obviously gain is extremely important, right? There's this thing called link budget. So yeah You definitely have to have enough gain to satisfy and balance out that link budget equation That's the first step now. We know that there's a lot of variables out there, right in the world that can change this link Budget calculation because it's not static. It's not just point a to point b. There's environmental issues. There's noise issues So I mean typically yes, you do want, you know more gain than what the link budget says because you know It does rain it does snow you can't always overcome, you know those completely But it's it's good to buffer your link budget just a little bit But the the the key here is, you know, not to just use ungodly amounts of gain Just because I think that's really the the main point. We're trying to throw out there I mean I see people on the forums all the time saying yeah, I'm doing a one-mile link and you know Just use 34 dbi dishes, right? It's just that kind of generic thing is just it's just not good I mean because you you also can you know overdrive right the radios themselves so radios don't like super super hot signals Especially at these higher modulation rates You definitely need more signal the higher you go modulation rate But I mean to just kill it with gain. It's definitely not more better for sure You know stick with the calculation figure out what you need physically for that link you can add a few dbi You know obviously to kind of buffer it for rain fade and other potential problems And it's best to have a more balanced network where the the radio is happy with the receive signal and everything else just stays in tune from there Yeah, that's why it's so important to run that link calculator You know, we beat this drum all the time link calculator link calculator You know pay attention to it and it really matters because like I said, you don't want to overdrive You don't want to overpay, you know, like why do you want to pay for you know? The highest gain attending you can got where something simple something smaller especially smaller footprint You know your small symmetricals and stuff for your micropops And there's no need to put the absolute biggest intended that you need on there where you can get by just fine with you know Something lower gain also not picking up the noise from eight miles away, which is super important as well Yeah, I think that's another kind of like misconception on that as well Right because people say well, I could use more game But I could just turn down the power and and you're right Obviously you can but you can't turn down the receive gain of that higher dish So even if you turn down your overall tx power again, you know on the receiving side of that You're going to get a much hotter signal because again You know you if you have 34 dbi for antenna gain that that's how much you know Intensity you're gonna receive so you can't really tune both sides down Obviously you know adjusting your tx power appropriately staying within eirp limits That's the other thing you have to think about which I think a lot of people don't do sometimes but eirp limits What's that? I mean you just turn everything up all the way, right? Yeah, exactly exactly full power So I remember the first little link I did where I just it was a super short and I forget the details But like the the received signal came out like a neg 23 or something crazy like that And I'm like man this link is gonna run great and it didn't run over the flip because I was just completely overloading the receiver So we see that one quite a bit as people are in the learning curve for sure. Yeah So cool cool another one that someone threw out there. Uh, let's see. Oh 2 4 is dead The death of 2 4 we've been hearing about the death of 2 4 since the launch of 2 I think so I Mean it's certainly not as popular You know when we first started doing this years and years ago or 24 dbi dishes on You know on 2 4 shooting 10 miles to an omni and you could because I mean there was no noise There was no competition and you were happy with yet 500k that thing was max now that but you know You were happy with that now of course You know with the advent of just so much more noise and competition in the wireless routers and people's houses and stuff That band got trashed out a bit But honestly, I think it's making kind of like a retro resurgence, you know kind of like I don't know Bell-bottom jeans or something like that, you know, these certain things are sort of cyclical. So definitely Yeah, that should do if you kind of flip it My Halloween costume for this year, so But yeah, I mean, I see a lot of people talking about 2 for a lot I thought we kind of talk about that and just you know Let folks know it ain't dead. Yeah, no, I think really the you know From my perspective, you know the death I would say is really the support for 2.4 gigahertz and you know manufacturers you know, I Guess, you know not really wanting to kind of push That frequency band because of the limited spectrum, right? You only have what 60 megahertz of spectrum So you have you know three non overlapping 20 megahertz channels So I wouldn't say the technology is dead obviously like you said You know, there's there was the noise floor that went through the roof And again, you know the same thing happened with 5 gig right people say oh 5 gig is trash But it took a new antenna technology like our horns to kind of come out Clean allow that up and make it a lot more efficient So I think the same thing could happen with 2.4 again the methodology on most of the deployments with 2.4 is Again using omnis, right or extremely sloppy sectors. Maybe we can help in the future I mean our array sector does a really good job at suppressing some side lobes giving you some really good Colocation capability because of the integrated back shield and stuff like that So I think it it could have another resurgence other than you know The fact that now most of your home routers are going to 5 gigs So all those 2.4 gigahertz home routers that were raising the noise floor and these deployments is now going down We're seeing again a you know, like you said a resurgence of it And I think if we use it correctly this time around, right? For instance using it for those kind of near line of side type situations where 2.4 gigahertz Attenuates better it could be a really low-cost option for some people compared to let's say maybe moving to CBRS Which is a much higher cost Expense to kind of jump into the potential there for licensing and other things that's there So so I think there's definitely a place for 2.4. It's probably not going to be for your 100 meg 100 plus meg packages It'll be for your real rural real dense I think again, we have to take it You know one step forward where it used to be one Omni high gain Omni on the top of a tower in a rural area You know, let's let's go back to at least, you know 2.4 gigahertz with four sectors Maybe running 10 megahertz channels to give you non overlapping to give you some guard I mean there's a lot of tricks and techniques that that can be done to really effectively use 2.4 gigahertz in today's market and get to some of these customers that you couldn't get to before at a really effective price point Yeah, you know, you don't want to call it necessarily a connection of last resort because it's definitely not that but you know These are your cases were rural connections or spread out low density And we're trying to clip through those last few trees that maybe your five gigs not cut No, especially once it gets rain on the leaves and stuff like that So this is why we released the 2.414 sector earlier this year. We now have the 2.417 Which will be shipping here soon, which is pretty sweet Refactor the arrays in there So we're able to get it in the same form factor or very very very similar form factor, which is pretty sweet So really happy about the work. We were able to get done on that. So that'll be out there soon We've got a lot of demand for that and we look forward to seeing your guys Sort of crazy whack-a-doo shoot through the stuff. We tell you not to shoot through connections But sometimes you got to get it dead. That's all I did. I mean, that's what it comes down to I mean, like I said, there's there's a lot of things that folks do that sometimes we we kind of you know Joke with and stuff like that and it's you know, we understand at the end of the day You got to do what you got to do, right? Not every every wisp has the same operating budget, right? So some people really have to operate on the shoestring budget and that's that's understandable And like I said, I think you know what we trying to do is to really just put out there What the real best methods are for these particular frequencies these types of radios, you know, what works best? In these types of situations, especially again non-line-of-sight. I mean, that's my biggest pet peeve You know, I understand that there's you know a lot of you know wireless technology out there That clearly works in non-line-of-sight, you know But it doesn't mean that, you know, you should be able to do that or you should do that in every different frequency band That's out there. So some are better than others and some could be utilized Better than others for that particular job. So in the end, you know, try and apply some of these techniques that we're doing Take into consideration some of the things that we're saying are best known methods Try not to violate those methods as much as possible And you know, you should get that the best user experience because in the end again That's that's that's what we're looking for as an industry because if you start doing something That's totally off the wall and and and really doesn't run well It really creates this negative Perception of wisps and stuff like that in the end. We really want that to take off I mean if everyone's scared about, you know, Skynet and you know fart link out there, you know With their satellite internet offerings and stuff like that, you know We can see how the negative marketing for that can affect the markets We don't want that same type of negative thing coming towards the wisp industry want to keep it clean We want to keep those services better. It's okay if you're offering two or five meg packages That's cool. But make it a freaking solid two or five meg connection make it something. That's absolutely reliable and Again, that'll help us all in the long run Yeah, a hundred percent that reliability is such an important aspect of it because it's so easy to get caught up on prices And speeds and you know, there's sort of peak numbers and stuff But if it's not reliable, then none of it really matters. So exactly Also, thank you for placing that fart link time bomb in my head So next time when this comes up and I say that I'm like I get get get so I have my like, you know My hashtags right like fake G is 5g fart link is you know star link and I'm sure I'll come up with some other ones later Yeah, that might have burned getting the Elon on the podcast. So it's just the risk we take Bring it man yeah, so Recent conversation we just had the other day is some of the misunderstandings about how you do the channel planning on some of This big array towers that we set up So, you know, we're seeing more and more of these folks running 12, you know 18 sectors where you're on 12 30s You're in 1820s or you know, you do one ring of that You add another ring or you throw some ultra horns and stuff on top people are like, how do you channel plan for that? you know, what's what's the list and You know, it's easy to be like well in a totally, you know, Greenfield environment nothing else, you know Oh, just ABC or ABCD so but I mean the real world is real and it's painful sometimes and you know You've got to look at you. You've got to do your spectrum analysis You've got to look at each one of your sectors and sort of map out build a chart I would say of what that is So I don't know what's your common experience when you're talking to folks and talking about some of their initial channel Planning's on these bigger arrays. Yeah, so again, yeah, every deployment's different, right? So, you know, some people can get away with a AB AB some go ABC ABCD, you know, obviously It kind of depends. I think, you know, there's really there's there's two kind of Variables that you have to look at right. So first off is, you know, how well, you know, are the APs co located That's the first part of like say GPS sync being successful, right? So the AB AB or ABC Kind of channel planning really depends on, you know, when you reuse a does the first a here You are not or do you interfere with that? So that might be the case that it doesn't maybe everything is great You're using our horns. You have good spatial diversity between the horns on the tower So therefore you can use only two channels and build a ring of 12 Let's just say that works the thing that people often forget is that by the time you use A let's say for the third time, maybe it's on the back back of the tower Yeah, maybe the other APs that are on channel a don't hear that third one So, you know, in theory it should work if that particular frequency is being used, you know Downrange by another tower and it's blasting frequency a right back at that horn or that particular antenna You can't use it, right? So I think that's that's the big thing is, you know You really kind of have to see what your, you know What your deployment looks like so it might be a B It might be a BC or AC or something like that You might have to throw in that third freight frequency every now and then and you can try and reuse a again on the next The next run around based on what's available Downstream now when we start talking about, you know building multiple rings, which is very popular You have to start again, including some spatial diversity, right? You have to have space maybe spatial diversity is the wrong word to use But you have to have space between the rings basically to create that isolation So, I mean typically you build one ring and hopefully at least 10 feet below that ring You can start building your second ring and the way we try and do this when we, you know Try and explain it to a whisper that's doing it is you shouldn't have let's say a and a You know 10 feet apart but one on top of each other what the second ring should be pointing down the Center of where, you know, the two horns come together if that makes sense So you have, you know channel a here channel B here 10 feet down It should be right in the middle So you should be shooting down where the two patterns come together You kind of build like a daisy right the way the petals of a daisy go They don't go all in line You have a ring and then it's offset for the next ring and it's offset for the next ring So it gets pretty complicated It's it's very difficult to Kind of explain it and not visualize it for people But I think maybe you start to at least get the idea of how it's done and again You never know, you know what it's going to be like until you actually do it So none of this stuff is textbook just like you can't just go and trust the spec sheets, right? I mean things just don't work like that in the real world I mean we give you the the basic foundation of how these things work and the best known practices for doing it But it doesn't always work out exactly like that No, that's actually a really good point And I think the the point of the misconceptions about you know how the horns work Especially in general with blocking out the noise we hear this quite a bit, too They're like hey, you know, I put up these horns and it's really noisy environment I'm still seeing a lot of noise my modulation rates are dropping. I thought it's cut out all the noise I'm like, yeah, well, I mean, yes, it cuts out the back lobes because I love obviously that's the point It's our whole gimmick behind what we're doing with these horns, right? But you know the noise your unwanted signal that's not your carriers that you're trying to deal with that are in the main lobe In that main service face of that antenna, you know, there's no magic bullet or panacea to get rid of that And I think that's a really big misconception and people are like, I don't have a channel plan I just throw these up and they magically cut out of the noise and unfortunately That's not how physics works in the real world. Yeah, yeah And we saw that I mean just recently right Caleb We were working with a customer and it's a really high noise environment and you know, we said, well Let's look at the spectrum scan, right? So you saw like all this noise and you saw this opening down here And you saw all this noise over here and for whatever reason they they wanted to operate Where you know, there was this high intensity, right? And it's like well, it's noisy, but the horn should work I was like, yeah But the horn is telling you that it sees all these frequencies being used down its bore sites It can't tune that out, right? But you have this whole chunk right here that's available. Why aren't you using that? Well, because we want to see it working noise It's like there's a difference between the ambient noise and the noise floor that comes up And actually, you know, physically used channels that are that are pointing right at your antenna So, you know that again the noise isolation and the beauty of the horns is that When you put one out, you will find somewhere in the spectrum a usable channel And that's the one you should be using not to try and, you know, live within, you know A bunch of used channels that are pointing right at you Yeah, and that's why these spectrum analysis are really important And this is why we always try to stress if you're new to the ecosystem And you're like, well, I'm going to try this up like we point out Hey, try these horns where you've already got an existing sector, right? Do your spectrum analysis, take pictures, take notes and everything else Swap that antenna over to the horn now compare it And what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot less reds You're going to see a lot more greens You're going to see your waterfall densities decrease You're going to see gaps Like a lot of times, you know, there's hard sort of barriers Where your channels will start to show up more blockier Instead of just being one big blob You'll start to see more of the focus on the channelized stuff And you can get in there in those nulls and operate So, you know, that before and after is the experience part of it Like you've got to play around with a few The same as playing in the frequency arrays or the frequency channels On these bigger arrays, you know, like Until you get out there and do one of them And kind of see what it works out in the real world, you know It's all just a paper exercise But, you know, these things come with experience And it's just a matter of playing around with a little bit And you'll get it figured out So don't fret, but don't go into it Don't go boldly into the night with your eyes closed Yeah, definitely not Oh, let's see, what else has come up interesting? Oh, the connectors on top So you actually explained this to me the other day And I never actually thought about it this way So, you know, it comes up on the twist port adapter With the SMA connectors People are like, well, why is this connector on top? I want to go to the side and the bottom Well, that's not how that twist port is built That twist port is built So that one connector on top and then one connector to the right And that, you know, actually has a weep hole in the bottom So tiny little hole So if you ever did pick up some moisture Or, you know, condensation, you know From rapid temp changes and stuff like that It's got somewhere to go So it's really important that you put that up The label's up the right way But we got into a conversation about how the Connectors are more waterproof If they're on top with the way that works So if you'll explain to the crowd Kind of what you told me the other day You did a really good job of it Yeah, so it'd be kind of hard to visualize it So if you look at, you know, this being The SMA with the thread, right? This is what's basically on the radio or the twist port adapter If you think about the, you know, RP SMA It's usually a barrel that kind of goes around The actual thread itself When it's facing up, it actually works better Because when you seal with either cold shrink or mastic Whatever it is Water will run down the outside of the nut And then it comes and it touches the threads And it drips down, right? Water actually gets into the connector via the thread So when your connector is facing down Again, the threads are here And this is the nut and the barrel's here Well, water's going to get on the threads And then it'll start dripping down inside the threads Into the connector And that's how you get your water and connector So actually having it facing up Is better than having it facing down I don't really, honestly, just want to make sure We got those visuals Are you showing that on the video too much? Like that? Yeah, you turned it on You turned it on So, but no, that's a really important point And I think we see this all the time And I'm like, guys, if the connector is on top Was a bad idea All the radio manufacturers wouldn't be doing it So whether you're Prisms or 3Ks or 3KLs or whatever So, I mean, you know, AirFiber11's got In connectors on top and stuff Yeah, for a lot of this stuff It's really at a convenience, right? So it's not always the best design Doesn't mean it's the absolute worst, right? But I think there's some compromises That manufacturers make based on that And CBRS sectors are probably one of the best cases of this Right? So, you know, you see a lot of CBRS sectors With the end connectors at the bottom Of the actual patch array sector And that's because it just makes sense At the bottom, you screw it straight up You can have your drip loop And it kind of goes up to the radio Where as if you have it, you know Coming out the back Then it's going to be sideways And you have to have a weird bend And what have you But really, when you look at antenna design Specifically patch array design The connectors being in the middle of the array Or closer to the middle of the array Is actually more efficient And gives you a better output from your antenna Than having the feed lines at the bottom Because then you have to have these large traces Because it does the patch array feeds Into the center of the array, right? So you have a lot of parasitic radiation Or parasitic loss through these traces That create a lot of these side lobes In this near field type antenna Basically it's like a long antenna that you're creating So it's really not the best place to put it For that particular reason But again, manufacturers do it Because it's convenient Because maybe the user base says Will it be a lot easier if it was at the bottom So like, hey, let's just put it there Rather than say, yeah, we can put it there But we're not giving you the best antenna So you can see this in our CBRS sector That we have the connectors in the middle of the array Where it's supposed to be to give you the best RF performance And we've done some really cool stuff To help you with weatherproofing And stuff like that on it as well So we make the best out of both worlds Yeah, that's a really slick setup So all that stuff's online on the website now So check it out, the little hat protector covers Are pretty slick, so But yeah, just in general, like As much people want to sweat connectors aside Top, bottom, whatever else In the end, if you do a good job of weatherproofing them Then you're going to be fine That ain't 9.99% of the time, right? So whether you're old school and run tape, Mastic tape, whether you're using cold shrink Or some of this newer tech and stuff out there Integrating the scheme of things As long as you do a good quality job of sealing up your connectors You typically don't have nothing to worry about anyways Yep, absolutely And then to wrap it up here You know, we've talked about fiber several times In this, you know I don't think we necessarily want to beat the Beat the drum again on a lot of that But one of the things that was brought up is Hey, you know, people are like fibers are best So fiber is the only option Fiber is the best option And we've discussed in the past No, it is, you know It depends on a lot of things So I mainly just want to sort of reiterate That the choice of fiber Whether you're deploying the business case As you as an operator Or the demographics of where you're deploying Is an extremely subjective thing, right? So like so many other things in our industry Or in the world in general Everyone wants a black and white, you know Objective, this is this, right? But it's a great world And a lot of these things are super subjective And whether or not you're doing fiber And how you're doing it Really plays into that so much Yeah, definitely Again, I think the hybrid model is here to stay And I think all wisps should be considering You know, just offering some sort of Fiber connectivity when they can If they can, obviously Yeah, I really think the whole fiber push Has a lot to do with this kind of just You know, general industry push For more and more bandwidth per customer And a lot of it is just wasteful, right? There's a lot of government money out there And therefore, you know, fiber has, you know Some of the highest guaranteed kind of speeds And latency and is able to Again, on paper deliver the, you know What the minimum requirement is To be categorized as, you know As broadband, right? But I think wisps are, you know Able to do it with wireless faster, right? I mean, obviously we have 60 gigahertz now We're pushing, you know, multiple hundreds of megs Which I still think is a lot for your average customer Of course, there's the very niche market of gamers That have to download a, you know Four or five gig, you know Patch or update for the game and stuff like that But I mean that the typical Wisp customer and I'm not a wisp Again, I always have to say that, right? So maybe there's some wisps out there That can share some of that data with us And I'd be interested to see what the breakdown is Of, you know, the type of services That are really hogging this bandwidth And really require it And what percentage is that of your overall Wisp customer base? And just shooting in the dark, I'm thinking 10%, right? Probably not more than that, you know Streaming some Netflix, streaming some YouTube videos On the downlink, we're talking dozens of megs Probably for the average household, you know Again, there's always going to be the ones That, you know, are on the torrents And downloading constantly and doing some weird shit But that's not your typical user It's not your typical user at all And yeah, so fiber is great, right? Definitely get on board if you can There's a place for it But again, I think it's What's fueling the drive for fiber right now Is this just overwhelming Miss marketing of what users need As far as real deliverable bandwidth In order for, you know, the average household To operate in the modern world Yeah, for sure And it's, you know, we were talking to some new folks And stuff at Wisp of Palooza a couple weeks ago And man, I don't even try doing this, you know Because fiber this, fiber that I'm like, you know, talking about Well, where are you located? Where are your demographics? What is your density look like? And, you know, the realistic side of it Is fiber is never going to make sense here Now, there's a lot of government money Pushing a lot of it out there But, you know, those are only sort of slim areas And it's based on how good your congressman May be getting that hand out there And getting all that free government money at play So, I mean, you know, I think the potential For new Wisp deployments is probably as high If not higher than it's ever been, you know So don't lose hope Yeah, fiber is awesome if you can do it Or do it where it makes sense And keep your wireless where it makes sense You know, again, it's such a subjective thing And I think anyone that dictates There's only one answer here Is misguiding at the least And just sort of downright dubious at the worst So, yeah Cool, cool, man Well, I think we about hit our time this week That was the top list of topics I just sort of grabbed from questions But we're here to answer your questions So, folks, you want to hear from us You want us to talk about some different topics Different areas You want us to expound upon what we've been talking about Get into deeper details Let us know, you know Anything you want us to hit Let us know and we'll do our best to get that done You can find us on our social media sites RF Elements English RF Elements main page We're all over Facebook We've talked in those user groups You can find us at Caleb at RFelements.com Toss us at RFelements.com Oh, call to action We forgot to call people to action Yeah, I was just about to roll right into it And then you said it It was going to look so smooth and natural The way I was going to be Make sure you all like, listen, and subscribe To our YouTube channel Or anywhere you download your podcast Like Google, Spotify, or Apple But until next time, I guess, stay horny Stay horny, everybody