If I understand correctly line of sight, and height, are key to extending how far you can transmit. What tricks have others used to gain height around their area? I’m kicking around a lot of ideas that range from a flagpole in my backyard to asking the local musicality if I can mount a node on our water tower. What has given you the most success for extending range in a tricky area?
From what I’ve seen, if a local municipality isn’t down to let you put up a node, people will usually erect a pole at the best spot the legally can. Used radio towers become hot commodities in the right areas
I live just a few blocks from a 1500’ radio and television antenna. I’ve exchanged a few emails with them about mounting a repeater on it, but it would have to meet some fairly brutal requirements and I’m not in a position to pay for that kind of unit at the moment. Maybe someday…
Meanwhile, I live in a hilly area. A repeater on my house would have a limited area. Fortunately, I have a good friend, who is also a Meshtastic user, whose house is the top of the highest ridge. She put my solar repeater on top of her chimney (with standoffs to avoid heat problems), which got the antenna up above pretty much everything.
When we first got our radios we could only see a half-dozen nodes, including ours. The day the repeater went up, that suddenly expanded to over a hundred. Now, as several other repeaters have come up around us, that number has doubled at least twice. And it keeps going up.
Height is might