Pole Mounted Signal Booster Question

[WiseFly]

Howdy everyone, I currently work for a larger police department that uses Autel Max 4Ts and will have an Autel Alpha whenever it finally gets through customs. Right now we are operating on our main stations roof near many other tall buildings and we are wanting to mount a signal booster (hopefully omnidirectional) on a pole that would be about 20-30 feet above the station. I’ve seen some of the coax cables show the longer the cable the more signal loss there is. One of our scenarios we stay on the roof and will only need a 50 feet cable max, how bad would the signal loss be? I understand that there are higher quality cables that can reduce this and for the most part the price isn’t the issue, but would our drone still functional normally and have the same or better range with this set up? The other scenario the cable would need to be 150-200 feet long. Would this distance still be doable even with high quality cables? Any suggestions for brands / equipment / feasibility would be appreciated. I also apologize if this is the wrong forum for this! Also a question for those that fly Autel Max 4T’s, do any of yall notice any latency issues with the controllers because pretty all 10 drones we have have pretty decent latency compared to our older Evo IIs or our personal drones? Thanks!

 

[jmichael]

It’s not so much a matter of getting a more expensive cable as getting the right one. There are online calculators for determining amount of signal loss for a cable type and frequency. My guess would be LMR-400. Does your department have an RF engineer for the radio network?

 

[adm_geomatics]

Howdy everyone, I currently work for a larger police department that uses Autel Max 4Ts and will have an Autel Alpha whenever it finally gets through customs. Right now we are operating on our main stations roof near many other tall buildings and we are wanting to mount a signal booster (hopefully omnidirectional) on a pole that would be about 20-30 feet above the station. I’ve seen some of the coax cables show the longer the cable the more signal loss there is. One of our scenarios we stay on the roof and will only need a 50 feet cable max, how bad would the signal loss be? I understand that there are higher quality cables that can reduce this and for the most part the price isn’t the issue, but would our drone still functional normally and have the same or better range with this set up? The other scenario the cable would need to be 150-200 feet long. Would this distance still be doable even with high quality cables? Any suggestions for brands / equipment / feasibility would be appreciated. I also apologize if this is the wrong forum for this! Also a question for those that fly Autel Max 4T’s, do any of yall notice any latency issues with the controllers because pretty all 10 drones we have have pretty decent latency compared to our older Evo IIs or our personal drones? Thanks!

Out of curiosity what is the purpose of the booster? Did you acquire a BVLOS permit? Have you tried an RC antenna booster. I went through testing with a couple of different brands and could hit around 8km pretty well. I too flew Autel and did notice across the board that their signal stability can be a little lacking at different headings depending on where the physical antennae are mounted on the drone.