Groove A-2Hn Output power 20 dB low

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

I have a pair of Groove A-2Hn radios that was working as a P-to-P link. The radios were purchased 12 months ago, set up and tested when received but never put in service until recently. Both units were recently installed inside with coax to outdoor antennas. The link was working well for a few days but then failed. One of the radios was found to be dead. A different power supply, power injector cable and cable from power injector to radio was tried but still the radio did not power up until trying multiple times. Then even though the radio did finally power up the link would not work. All settings were checked and found to be correct.

Both radios were brought into the shop and powered up side by side into load terminations. They did connect and work as normal on the bench. A power output comparison was made between the two units while connected to a spectrum analyzer. One radio showed proper power output of approximately +28 dBm but the radio that had failed had a maximum power of just over 0 dBm. Doing a reset and attempting to change power levels on this radio made no difference.

So am I missing something or do I have a bad Groove A-2Hn?

Thanks,
Dexter

2

I had a Groove 5Hn do the same.

I had enough gain on the link that I kept it in service until the next time we went up the tower.

Now that I’ve got it on the ground I really need to see what happened. Brand new, test link worked great indoors, signal was toast immediately after installing on the tower. Swapped everything, just in case, no change.

Unit was never powered on without an antenna. I haven’t had any problems out of the rest. One Groove 2 died after 2 weeks, but it may have been weather related. Couldn’t find any water, everything was sealed up, but I didn’t crack the case and void my warranty.