coming from ubnt hardware i’ve started now with my first mikrotik and 60ghz experience. So everything is new to me, please be kind
I’ve replaced a short 80 meter nanobeam 5ghz link with the RBwAPG-60ad kit and asking me now how to adjust those great and powerful antennas.
How to align them to the perfect way? At the moment TX Sector Info says: right 11.4 degrees, up 3.8 degrees. So i assume there is a big tilt. Don’t get me wrong, the link already works perfect with a great troughput but i want to make it as good as possible.
The link signal is stable 90 and MCS is 8. My feeling says there should be a signal of 100 with highest MCS possible. There is a free LOS.
But due to my less experience with RouterOS and 60ghz and the not really adjustable mounting of the devices i’m asking you guys what should i expect from the link?
Please give me some input how to use RouterOS to make a perfect alignment.
Is there also some better mounting available to tilt and turn the devices in a better way?
The aerial for the WAP60AD is a 8x8 multi-sector array starting at top left 0 ending bottom right 63 (think in terms of a 8x8 grid or table) so sector 27 or 35 is roughly in the middle while sector 34 is meaning a little to the left and perhaps down a bit.
This is indicated in the client tx-sector info which indicates how you could turn the aerial to improve signal.
I use the Mikrotik QMP Quickmount Pro and mount the WAP60AD onto the optional round bracket with a pair of cable ties and use this to better align the aerial if required.
But Mikrotik tell me the idea of the aerial array is to imagine a pair of eyes looking left or right, up or down and they “auto-align”. They are designed to work this way and not being perfectly aligned is acceptable. For me you do the best to align the devices then trust the Mikrotik engineers
My experience with these has been very good (up to 200m) - just make sure you are running the latest Longterm Support version of RoS to get the best out of them.
yes you helped me a lot of understanding the devices! Thanks a lot! So i’m not that misaligned as i thought, which is great.
I also will give a try to the QMP, it is cheap and looks good. Didn’t know anything about the auto-align functionality but seems to work good. I’m slightly tilted and the devices already have the full power and throughput.
