Is there a such thing as a "dead" spot with certain Carriers???

[gscheb]

Hello,

Have an issue getting AT&T to work in a certain home. Which is odd because it is working at another home farther away on the same county road. Both places are using a WE826 with MC74544. Have taken the new WE826 to the home with the good signal and it runs fine there so know there is nothing wrong with the modem/router itself. Have tried both a proxicast mimo antenna and two log periodic directional antennas. Have tried different Lmr 400 cables runs to see if that was the issue and it wasn't. The closer house is actually little higher elevation I believe. The closer home has a pole that is about 26' in the air which I believe is pretty comparable to the farther away home. Even without external antennas the farther away home has better signal strength. The only thing about the closer home with the weaker signal is it is closer to trees. But it is winter and most of the leaves are gone. The farther away home has a proxicast mimo panel antenna with 25' lmr 400. The closer home has two log periodic directional antennas because they did better that the proxicast mimo panel antenna. The Closer home currently have 20' of lmr 400.
Both homes have about the same signal strength of band 12 it is band 2 that is causing the issue of course.

The place that is farther away is 5.16 miles away marked in red.
The place that is closer is 4.85 miles away and marked in blue.

Does anyone have any ideas if what could be going on here? Currently lost and staring to think this house is in some kind of dead zone if such things exist?

Dead Zone.PNG

[terryjett]

Without seeing the "whole picture", very hard to give advise:)

If you want to PM me the tower address and home address with issue, will take a closer look at the surrounding area.

Also are there any metal buildings in path? Is roof metal or shingles? Could be any one of a hundred things.

[gscheb]

Hello,
Thanks for any advice. As you will see in this picture it is crossing the garage but not whole house. Also include another zoomed out photo of some other houses and such. Then after that it is pretty much nothing but trees for miles.

Closeup of house.PNG

Zoomed out of house.PNG

[terryjett]

Wish could say with confidence I knew what the issue is...

Can't really tell if the roofs are metal but if they are, reflection could be the issue.

I have attached some images quickly laid out. Do not see anything that pops out. My recommendation is move the antennas to south end of house if roof is metal. Either way, point antennas little to southwest may help if having reflection issues.

example_1.jpg

example_2.jpg

example_3.jpg

example_4.jpg

Your antenna height of 25 ft should be good. The tower is approx 240 ft. Looking at last image above, should be clear path.

Cellmapper is not much help, but might give you some ideas on which bands are active: https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=310& ... lours=true

[gscheb]

The roofs on the houses are not metal. They are shingle asphalt type.
Put Red squares around the couple small metal buildings that it does go by shown below.

Metal Buildings.PNG

Was wondering is there ever anytime when these reflections off of metal objects can help you? If so maybe that is why it works at the house without the issue. If you look at that house again it goes right by a pretty large all metal pole barn and a metal soy bean silo. Shown below is the LOS going right by the metal barn and silo

Barn & Silo.PNG

Honestly not sure how you did the line of sight and the ground line together? Usually measure distance on google maps to find vector then if need to do alleviation check look at link.ui.com

Also bands to connect to, know at the house without the issue have connected to band 12, 2 and 4

[terryjett]

Was wondering is there ever anytime when these reflections off of metal objects can help you?

It can go both ways. Reflection off of metal surfaces can disperse a weak signal or sometimes concentrate it. Very hard to predict.

My recommendation is to a "walk around the outside home" with just the router/stock antennas and find the best signal. Had to do something like this (matter of fact had built adapter for WE826 that hooks to small 12v alarm style battery). Really about only way without specialized test equipment.

Even raising / lowering the external antennas a foot can sometime change low signal level into a usable one.

Crazy as all this seems, it happens in rural areas more than most think.

The map plots I did are from a test software building so they look little different:)

[gscheb]

Hello this issue has been resolved on accident really. In the picture below blue arrow is sisters house with lte setup. Yellow arrow is my aunts house. The red arrow is a tree my aunt had removed just this weekend. After the tree was removed due to it leaning toward house bam the signal had huge increase.

Tree Removal.PNG

This set up is on AT&T running on band 12 and band 2.
Signal strength was:
Band 2 = Between -122 to -135 would fluctuate thru those stats
Band 12 = -107
Signal strength is:
Band 2 = -117
band 12 = -95
Of course due to this speeds have changed to a usable level before it was pretty terrible.
Never thought that just one tree could have caused so much issues.

[swwifty]

that's very interesting, must have been causing some multipath destructive interference. Typically with LTE you'll want some obstructions and not just clear LOS because then you can take advantage of MIMO better. This is a complicated topic, and counter intuitive to what one would expect.

[terryjett]

That is very strange. But, goes to show you how a little change in path and can improve results.

Sometimes just moving antenna over/up/down 5 feet can turn weak signal into a usable one.

Glad you got it worked out! Out of curiosity, do you know what type of tree it was? Sometimes leafs can be close to a signals wavelength and really absorb it up.

[gscheb]

Did move it up and down and all that trying to tweak the signal. Didn't work and had done that at other other places with success.
No not sure what kind of tree it was. But this time of year where I live not much leaves left all gone pretty much. It was a massive tree though.
Weirdest thing it was all on accident. Wasn't taken down for signal gain. After it was gone just went to go check it for the fun of it didn't think it would matter much. After seen the results didn't believe. So went back and checked it the next day and same results.

[BillA]

Did move it up and down and all that trying to tweak the signal. Didn't work and had done that at other other places with success.
No not sure what kind of tree it was. But this time of year where I live not much leaves left all gone pretty much. It was a massive tree though.
Weirdest thing it was all on accident. Wasn't taken down for signal gain. After it was gone just went to go check it for the fun of it didn't think it would matter much. After seen the results didn't believe. So went back and checked it the next day and same results.

I've read about this signal blocking phenomenon a while ago, and it turns out that in places where the soil is rich in metallic minerals it can leach into plants and trees, causing a stronger signal blocking effect than in non-mineral rich places. It actually makes logical sense, as I have experienced this myself twice a year, once in the spring then in the fall. Mobile carriers actually have to "re-tune" their network to compensate for these yearly changes.