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Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:47 pm
by scott.flora
I have two of these yagis installed at 45 degrees to each other and they are hooked up to a MR 1100 Nighthawk. They are about 12 ft. up on the pole and I am 1.4 miles from the tower.
https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/antennas/4g-lte ... l-antenna/
They are pointed at the tower and dialed in using the routers signal strength as guide.
In a post on this forum there is a link to https://link.ui.com/#. This lets you map from Tower to receiver and see it from a side view. When I did my location there was an 11 degree tilt upward from my house to the cell tower assuming the tower is 100 ft. tall.
My question is would I gain any signal strength by tilting the yagis upward 10-11 degrees?

Re: Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 6:11 pm
by swwifty
scott.flora wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:47 pm I have two of these yagis installed at 45 degrees to each other and they are hooked up to a MR 1100 Nighthawk. They are about 12 ft. up on the pole and I am 1.4 miles from the tower.
https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/antennas/4g-lte ... l-antenna/
They are pointed at the tower and dialed in using the routers signal strength as guide.
In a post on this forum there is a link to https://link.ui.com/#. This lets you map from Tower to receiver and see it from a side view. When I did my location there was an 11 degree tilt upward from my house to the cell tower assuming the tower is 100 ft. tall.
My question is would I gain any signal strength by tilting the yagis upward 10-11 degrees?
No, I doubt up tilting the yagis will make any difference. Carriers downtilt the sector antennas on towers to provide proper coverage range from the tower itself.

You can of course try, but I'd be quite surprised if it made any difference. Additionally, it would be hard to quantify given the conditions change so much and so many variables are involved.

Re: Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 7:27 pm
by Didneywhorl
Ive always defaulted mine t approx 2 to 5 degree uptilt, but thats just to make sure its not tilting down after pole install. Like swwifty says, try it and see.

Re: Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:01 pm
by BillA
scott.flora wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:47 pm I have two of these yagis installed at 45 degrees to each other and they are hooked up to a MR 1100 Nighthawk. They are about 12 ft. up on the pole and I am 1.4 miles from the tower.
https://thewirelesshaven.com/shop/antennas/4g-lte ... l-antenna/
They are pointed at the tower and dialed in using the routers signal strength as guide.
In a post on this forum there is a link to https://link.ui.com/#. This lets you map from Tower to receiver and see it from a side view. When I did my location there was an 11 degree tilt upward from my house to the cell tower assuming the tower is 100 ft. tall.
My question is would I gain any signal strength by tilting the yagis upward 10-11 degrees?

Just like Swwifty said, there are lots of variables when searching for a good signal.
In certain cases almost counter intuitively, sometimes you could get a better signal by not even aiming directly at the tower due to multi path reflections off of hills, building, metal rooftops, etc. Course I'd start aiming directly at the tower first, but also try to scan around with your antenna in a conical fashion towards the tower to find the best possible signal. One thing what's on paper or tower maps online, quite another in the real world. It's not necessarily the signal strength but signal "quality" you're looking for with the least amount of multipath interference.
Ok, I'm out... time to hit the clubzzz. ;D

Re: Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2020 1:15 pm
by scott.flora
So it sounds like the most important thing in aiming is to rotate the pole until the signal is best. Makes sense. The yagis did not give the gain I was hoping for. My primary issue is trees, so any increase I can find I'll take. I'm really thinking about moving the yagis to get a better line to the tower and then take out a few trees. That will bring other issues like longer cables and so on. I may need to start a post on that later on. Thank you all for your help.

Re: Yagi Antenna Tilt

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2020 5:37 am
by BillA
scott.flora wrote: Sun Jan 26, 2020 1:15 pm So it sounds like the most important thing in aiming is to rotate the pole until the signal is best. Makes sense. The yagis did not give the gain I was hoping for. My primary issue is trees, so any increase I can find I'll take. I'm really thinking about moving the yagis to get a better line to the tower and then take out a few trees. That will bring other issues like longer cables and so on. I may need to start a post on that later on. Thank you all for your help.

In most cases the higher the antenna position, the better the signal, course as you said that brings along a longer cable run with more losses (high frequency has a logarithmic loss as the cable length increases), so you really have to find a good balance between all those variables. There's nothing better than actually trying it.