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Cape Town Wireless User Group #2

OK so last week i came to the conclusion that i required my CPE to be mounted to a pole for better signal, and i was half right.
On Friday i went to Scoop Distributions with the intent of buying a pole, but when i got there i decided to buy the pole and a 5.8Ghz 24 dBi Antenna as well as all the cables and brackets.
Here is what i bought.

1x Aluminum Pole 2 meter, as it was half the price of the other poles.
1x Wall mount bracket.
1x 5.8Ghz 24 dBi antenna as it was the cheapest.
1x UFL To N-Type Female Bulkhead, this is the connector you will use to connect the Antenna to radio on the inside of your CPE.
1x Ntype Male To Ntype Male 1 meter, this connects your Antenna to the outside of your CPE.


So now i had all the equipment and it was time to connect everything, so i climbed back up onto the root and removed the CPE and its bracket.
The next thing to do was to add the External Antenna connector to the CPE, i opened up the CPE very carefully as the front part is the Antenna and a thin cable connects it to the radio.
I disconnected the internal antenna to make it easier to work, now underneath the CPE there are what looks like punch out holes, this is not the case, these are more of a guide as to where to drill the hole you need.

First i drilled a smallish hole and then filed out the rest checking every now and then to see if the Bulkhead connector would fit until it was exactly the right size.

Second was to connect the Bulkhead connector to the radio which i found much easier when i removed the Radio from its bracket on the router and then connected the Bulkhead, i all so connected the Internal Antenna to the Aux connection on the radio before i closed it back up. (just in case)

Now i was ready to attach the Ntype Male To Ntype Male cable from the CPE to the External Antenna but i had to assemble the Antenna first as it doesn't come all done for you.
Assembling the Antenna took about 2 minutes as it is very easy, about about another 2 minutes to attach to the top of the pole.
I connected the CPE and the Antenna with the 1 Meter Ntype Male To Ntype Male cable and then attached the CPE to the pole below the Antenna using the bracket i received when i bought the CPE allowing for minimal cable movement, but not making it to tight.

With everything connected and attached to the pole i was ready to drill my holes and mount the bracket which would hold the pole to the wall. I tried to find a ladder that would reach but no luck, i had to be on the roof to drill the holes leaving the pole below for now. I took the bracket, some drill bits, the drill, a pencil, coach bolts and some washers, you never know when you will need some washers!(and a spirit level but this is not that necessary)

Once i was up and i had power i started to drill, the first 1 went in no problem but the second and third one's higher up were almost impossible, i think i was drilling into concrete instead of the bricks but i managed to finally drill a deep enough holes. I used a 13 socket to fasten the bracket to the wall and was now ready to mount the pole.

I wasn't going to climb back down and up again so i got my Dad to pass the Pole to me, i put the pole on the inside of the bracket instead of the outside like i think your supposed to, to try and make it more stable while maintaining the maximum amount of height. this was the easiest part of the whole installation.
Once i had all the cables connected i had to climb back down to fetch the laptop to check for signal. So sitting on the roof i was now finally ready to scan for signal and make sure my new antenna was facing in the right direction.

Sitting up there i did the first scan and got nothing, OK i thought that's fine its just facing the wrong direction, so i turned it and did another scan, still nothing....... Another scan and nothing again..... I was getting a little worried as it was now getting dark and i was running out of time, the roof is not a fun place to be at night!
I remembered that i connected the internal antenna before i closed the CPE so i should be able to use it so i set it in winbox to use Antenna b instead of a, and i got a signal, now i knew there was something wrong with the new Antenna and i remembered reading something about the polarity or something or other, on the reciever part of the Antenna there was an arrow pointing left which looked right but i just had to try everything so i switched the Antenna in Winbox back to Antenna a and ran another scan but now i loosened the receiver part of the Antenna
and turned it to face upwards and found a Great siganl -79 i knew i had finally got it right so i fastened the Reciver back to the Antenna grid did a little fine tuningand got the signal to -78 and the laptop battery died!

Well i wasnt happy with what i had even though -78 is good enough so on Sunday after the rain had dried away i was back up there doing some more fine tuning and got a siganl of -76 wich i am now happy with.

In Conclusion to this experience i had a great time learning how and what to do, it was alot of work and alot of fun, i was constantly bumping my head figuratively as well as literally but i enjoyed the challange and with the help of the guys on the WUG i managed to get my setup working corretly.

Cape Town Wireless User Group

This is the latest thing i have done so i suppose it should be my first post.

I recently decided (Last Week Wednesday) that i was now going to join the Cape Town Wireless User Group or CT-WUG for short.
So to start things off i went to Google and typed in ctwug and hit search...which lead me to http://www.ctwug.za.net.
On the home page of this site is a link to a web based IRC client connecting you to all the CT-WUG admins, this was very useful as this is where i got all the much needed advice on what hardware to buy and which High Site i could connect to.

Another site i found was http://www.wug.za.net which allowed me to plot my location in Google Earth and then download a the .kmz file which when added to Google earth shows the locations of the High Sites in Cape Town. Updated ctwug.kmz
This allows you to start planning where on the roof of your house you are going to mount the unit.

So next i got on the phone with Scoop Distributions and checked that they had the hardware i was looking for, I decided to buy the 5.8GHz 19dBi CPE RB-411 R52 PS PoE as this was the laziest way to get up and running, for those that know me i tend to try and do as little as possible to get the most out of something, which seldom works but hey that's me.
Another thing i did which i now regret was not buy a pole to mount it on because i thought i would be able to mount it inside the roof, this of course would be easier than climbing onto the roof and drilling holes and what not and NO it will not work inside the roof.(Tried and Tested, i have the bump on the head to prove it)

Next i pick up the CPE and head off home to try it out only to discover that i don't know how the hell to connect to the thing to configure it, so again i hop onto the IRC channel and chat to the guys, they provided me with a link to download Winbox and the console manual.

Now able to connect to the CPE i could get up onto the roof and scan for the CT-WUG High Sites.
What i did to make things easier was run the network cable from my room where the switch is though the roof to the outside, the CPE uses Power over Ethernet so its just the 1 cable.
I have a spare Dlink wireless AP lying around wich i setup to to alow me to sit on the roof and connect to my network witout having another cable to the roof.

Next i climbed onto the roof with the CPE in 1 hand and my notebook in the other, i connected the CPE and waited for about 20 seconds the CPE Beeps twice when booting.

OK so now i was ready to start scanning for a CT-WUG High Site so i ran the Winbox.exe which i downloaded earlier and and connected to the MAC address as the IP is still blank, the user name was admin and the password was password but this could vary.
Once all the packages were downloaded from the router Winbox finally opened and i could sart my scanning.

I initially did a scan by clicking on the interfaces, clicking on wlan1 and running a scan, i found nothing usefull, no ct-wugs anywhere. I started getting worried that i had now spent all this money and i cant see any of the High Sites so i went back to the IRC channel and chatted to the guys again, i found out that i had to set the country to Austria on the CPE. i ran the scan again with the new settings and i finally picked up the CT-WUG, i was jumping up and down like i had just discovered Gold in my back yard. Back to the IRC Channel to spread the good news but i was in for a surprise!

I found out that having a signal strength of -85 is bad and that -78 is better, mine was -90 at the time so back up onto the roof with the notebook to allign the CPE in the correct direction, this took a lot of fine tuning but once i found the right spot wich i got -84 i drilled the holes and mounted the CPE directly to the houses outer wall.

Now having and ok signal got a hold of the High Site Admin wich was very helpfull in adding my MAC Adress to the High Site and giving me a new IP Range as well as talking me through adding the IP's and routes to my router to allow me access.

I was now connected and ready to start Gaming which works really well when the WUG is quite, i have now come to the conclusion that i need a pole on the roof and i need too mount the CPE higher to get a better signal as the -84 just isn't good enough, at peak times i cant even ping the High site.

Check back next week for the next installment where i will be installing the Pole, which i still need to buy by the way.