I live in the most northern part of Michigan and every winter we see a week or two of sub -20F with lows reaching -30F
If you are in very cold climates how or what do you use the handle the temperatures? I have not seen too many products that can handle those kind of extremes..
Thanks
Jeff
We see -40F for extended periods of time, plus windchill to -75F,and have Mikrotik & AP’s inside and use all-in-one CPE’s rated to -60F.
If you have MT and AP’s inside, what cable are you running up your towers? My longest current run is 250’. It was the first AP that I set up about 4 years ago, and I used LMR-400 because that was all I could afford at the time to a tower mounted amp. I am either looking for an acceptable cold climate AP or replacing the feed line with some big stuff.
Any suggestions on cable type for a 250’ run?
40’ LMR 400 at each location, try Tranzeo for AP’s in cold climates as Mikrotik does not operate low enough for our climate,but use Mikrotik on the ground, behind the Tranzeo AP .
I don’t have any experience with 250’ runs or anything other than LMR-400
diceman I am up in northern Ontario and have had RouterBoards mounted outdoors on towers for two years and have had no cold weather problems …
I think the boards basically provide their own source of heat within the enclosures … I have some in MT boxes and others in PVC NEMA boxes … All our enclosures are compleatly sealed with no air or heat exchange…
wifiradio–this is great news as I have been trying to find someone who has deployed these under extreme conditions, outside of the tested Mikrotik range of operation…
At the training in Pheonix we discussed trying your mentioned setup assuming it would generate enough heat.
I would not be quick to change any over, as I would rather work on any units indoors if problems arise..especially difficult access sites at -40 and windchill.
But this would be great for some of our planned expansion,
thanks for the info
well the nice thing about MT and routerboards is you never (almost) have to do any maintenence on them … The advantages of mounting the radios and antennas outdoors is the elimination of coax and amps … Also I have nevered bothered with lightning protection as the ABS enclosures are non conductive and we use fp antennas which are also ABS enclosed.
You should consider lightning arrestors on the end of your coax, if only to protect the board from transient voltages conducted through the cable if lightning strikes nearby. I also heard that a metal case or enclosing the unit in mesh acts as a Faraday cage and gives more lightning protection.
I’d be interested to know what precautions other users take to protect a MT on a tower.
Incidentally, latest ABS cases contain small holes drilled next to ethernet connectors - what are these for?
Trisc
Metal case for the radio, bonded to the tower structure
Surge protector on RF cable protects radio card
Surge protectors on ethernet and power inputs recommended.
… otherwise IMHO you are taking risks …
It sounds trivial, but actually is quite a big subject, and most people in the industry tend to ignore certain aspects.
Worth some debate and input from users I think …
We run metal enclosures (hoffman is MFR of choice) integrated boards with 2 mini-pci cards survive winters in the Rocky Mountains with out a hiccup. nights easily reach -40. Wind chill has no effect on radios.
We do use surge protection, since I would fire the dumb one who did not and required me to climb a tower to replace a Card! Seems to simple to ignore.
Is that -40 Celsius or Fahrenheit?
cmit, as strange as it sounds, -40c = -40f 
Aaaah, damn! 
That was the point where the two matched… 
I use -40 as everyone understands that’s COLD…lol
As we speak about cold weather I must ask about high temperature???
I have ran the same setup through the summer months and no problems with heat … I paln on running some torture test with abs boxes, solar panels and the new RB boards … ill do heat and cold and post the results…
wifiradio@yahoo.ca