A couple of months ago our supplier of wireless kit didn’t have any 5.8GHz grid antennae. We ended up buying two 5.3GHz 27dBi grids from them and using these grids in a point to point link.
Site 1:
RB433AH, 2 x R52H one of which had the one 27dBi grid.
Site 2:
RB433AH, 3 x R52H one of which had the other 27dBi grid.
Both sites are high sites in a backbone. There’s a lot of noise at site 2. The aerials were designed to work from 5275MHz to 5375MHz. The only bit of clear airspace we could find at site 2 was 5200MHz - 5280 to 5380 is heavily congested. Site 1 is 6km from site 2 and has very little noise.
The link didn’t work properly from the beginning. The best link quality we ever got was around 30%.
Today I collected a pair of nice 30dBi grids, removed the old grids, scanned the frequency range around 5475 to 5725MHz that the aerials are cut for and found a clean frequency. The only problem is that the radios would not lock on the new frequency. I then tried other frequencies and had the same problem over and over again.
Eventually I got the radios to lock on - you guessed it - 5200MHz.
I’m now getting 45-50% throughput.
The aerials are all wrong for the frequency being used, but the radios won’t lock on anything other than 5200MHz.
Do these radios build up a memory?
Is there a way to reset them?
What can I do to get the radios to work on frequencies other than 5200MHz?
The RB433AH at site 2 has two other R52H radios that are also used for point to point links. One blasts out at 5500 MHz and the other blasts out at 5520MHz without any issues.