I’ve done my share of stupidities, including activating an XR2 for a long time without any antenna attached. Now I am aware of the consequences but I still have one question:
Sometimes I need to configure the wireless interface in test environments where is very awkward to attach antennas. Is it safe to reduce the card TX Power to something like 1dBm to prevent damaging the card amplifier until the testing of the configuration is done?
I mean, I don’t need to do any associations, just mess around in RouterOS with the interface up…
Not sure about that particular radio card, but you could turn it down well below 1dbm. CM9 cards let me do -10 and don’t complain.
I attach a piece of cat-5 conductor to the center of the N connector on the pigtail. A couple inches is all you need to for half or quarter wavelength.
If you want to test power between radios without antennas, get an attenuator kit to simulate free space loss.
