Ideas for tower / signal transmission for line of site / WISP

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Stargazer

Stargazer

Supporting Founder
Original poster
Supporting Founder
Sep 7, 2003
16,567
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Western WV
I am trying to find all ideas possible for getting a wireless signal into my community as I have only a very small budget to work with. I have seen ladder towers (two attached together to form a T guyed off), pole with spring on the bottom to pull the tower down with the guy wires attached to a vehicle, tilt tower that pivots down, telescoping pole which is very hard to deal with from my experience with it (very flimsy). I have even read where some companies are launching balloons often with wifi equipment on it but have to relaunch a balloon every so many hours to keep the service going since the balloon does not last long and travels outside the area targeted for service.

There are also have issues trying to get power to a few sites I was looking at and was wondering what ideas might come from this board. I have looked at solar but it is very expensive and I am not sure how far I can run 12/2 before there is not enough power on the line to run the radios. The radios use around 7 watts each with two radios at the site and 12 volt DC power supplies. I have read that running DC current long ways is a bad idea so that is why I am looking at running AC but know that there is a voltage drop after a certain distance. I have noticed that a lot of wire made is rated at 600 volts. I read where I could put additional voltage on the line where the power is coming from and drop it back down on the end where I need the power for the radios. Having to run power a couple thousand feet means a power drop though going that far and dont know how it would work on that long of a wire run.

Any suggestions?
 
You could do a simple calculation of the voltage drop over your necessary distance to determine whether running 12/2 is practical or not. 7 watts translates to only ~60ma at 120vac. I'm not sure what your power supplies draw. But let's say for giggles and grins that your whole load is 100 watts. See the link below, which shows that the max. resistance for 12 ga. copper wire is 1.62 ohms per 1,000 ft, or 3.64 ohms round trip. 100 watts at 120 vac translates to ~0.83 amps. The voltage drop with that 100 watt load would be "I-squared x R" or only about 2.5 volts per 1,000'. That is completely reasonable for any electrical equipment I know, for up to about 4,000' in this example!

Now when you check the price for 1,000' of 12/2+G (and it would have to be an outdoor rated type insulation like UF for burial) you might have to do some other kind of calculation...!

Bare Copper Resistance Values
 
There is a small town about an hour from were I live that put wireless routers through out. They are outdoor routers like this Outdoor Wireless Router & Outdoor WiFi Networks - Meraki Wireless and they attached them to the streetlights. They took the cable internet system and hooked into them. That may be something to look at. Their system works great. They have the routers about every mile.

here is another.

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-DWL-1750-Outdoor-Wireless-Bridge/dp/B00009KH5W"]Amazon.com: D-Link DWL-1750 Outdoor Wireless Bridge/Router: Electronics[/ame]

BTW the town is Amory, MS if you want to do some research.
 
Stargazer,

I did something very much like this about five years ago at my remote floating cabin in Shawl Bay BC (google maps for "Simoom Sound, BC").

I strung 500 feet of 14/2 literally "over the river and through the woods" to a standard, farmer, Linksys WAP11. It had to be out a bit so I could see around a rock at the corner of the bay. The power end of the 14/2 was at the "town", which has satellite internet. The WAP11 was in a five gallon bucket with a few holes drilled, hung between two trees. Depending on tide, it was between five and fifteen feet from the salt water.

I used standard Linksys power boosters at each end (don't remember the model). For the data cable, I used standard plenum Cat 5 (or 5E, don't remember). This was also about 500 feet. I loosely wrapped the data and power cables together, to make the travel through the woods easier.

I had a WAP11 at my cabin. I had to use a flat diversity antenna at the cabin. I think it was from HyperLink. The distance from the cabin to the WAP11 at the point was about half a mile.

The town power was typically 110-130 volts, depending on how many boats were plugged in, etc. I note that the power spec on the WAP11 is 100-240v. You could feed 240v and the wire would need to be really long before the voltage dropped below 100v.

This setup worked great for about four years. It quit working one summer, and I noted that the town had dipped about fifty feet of my data cable in the salt water for about six months. I replaced that section, and it started to work again.

Interestingly enough, I could never get the ethernet to sync up with a 10 Mb switch. Once I changed to a 100 Mb switch, it synced up almost immediately. There's probably an electrical reason in there somewhere.

So, (finally) my point here is that farmer 14/2 wire and farmer cat 5E cable will work just fine at out-of-spec extended distances.

HTH
 
We use Tranzeo, High Gain, and Deliberant radios which are commercial grade made for going many miles. We have some Meraki and Open Mesh units at a few apartment complexes and a few other spots as well. This is in the areas where we have service. My longest 2.4 link is 7.5 miles but have some 5 ghz links that go much further. Nothing goes through dirt though. We are a very small WISP. There is a lot of terrain between my area and our towers / water tanks. Getting on the right hill with power means one hop into here.

I have noticed that the price of wire is down quite a bit now so I am guessing now is the time to buy a lot of wire if I am going to get it.
 
bajadudes said:
Get a grip..it was a joke fer crying out loud. This section of the board could use a little levity lately.
Click to expand...

Sorry. Didn't catch that. I thought you were one of those guys that goes into threads COUGH *SmithP* COUGH whenever someone asks a question, berates them for not digging through hundreds of thousands of posts to find an arcane reference made 2 years back. My apologies. :D
 
I actually thought he said google because a year ago google was interested in buying the company doing other things like telemetry using the balloons but I never heard anything about it since.
 
Stargazer said:
We use Tranzeo, High Gain, and Deliberant radios which are commercial grade made for going many miles. We have some Meraki and Open Mesh units at a few apartment complexes and a few other spots as well. This is in the areas where we have service. My longest 2.4 link is 7.5 miles but have some 5 ghz links that go much further. Nothing goes through dirt though. We are a very small WISP. There is a lot of terrain between my area and our towers / water tanks. Getting on the right hill with power means one hop into here.

I have noticed that the price of wire is down quite a bit now so I am guessing now is the time to buy a lot of wire if I am going to get it.
Click to expand...

Tanzeo's suck. I'd recommend that you look at Motorola Canopy radios with Redline Backhauls. The longest link I've installed with a 2.4 system is 23.2 miles, with max D/L speeds of 7MBPS and upload of 3MPBS. The longest I've hit on a 5.7 with a 360 antenna is 16 miles.

As to your original question, you may want to look at a small generator that you can remote or auto start, or even wind power with a large battery bank.

PM me if you want, and I'll see if I can dig up the specs on what we use.
 
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