Cell Style of Antenna

I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this but I couldn't find another one that came close to match my question about this commercial cell antenna. Many of these went up on top of my apartment recently and I live on the top floor so they've been causing trouble with my scanners. I've been trying to find info about them on cell tower mapping sites but they don't show up on any yet.

I took a photo of the bottom of one where it shows some frequencies, but I'm not sure how much power these use or what frequencies they operate at. I posted one shot of a close up of the closest one to me and its connections, another shot showing the full view of the antennas where a technician was working on it the other day. The close up shows in red what looks like 824-960Mhz.

I'm mainly curious about what power these can transmit at, what frequencies, or what type of transmissions (digital/analog). I'm also not sure what that device is attached to the bottom that has other connectors and things attached to the antenna. Its only on one of the antennas in the group.

tilt404 said:

I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum to post this but I couldn't find another one that came close to match my question about this commercial cell antenna. Many of these went up on top of my apartment recently and I live on the top floor so they've been causing trouble with my scanners. I've been trying to find info about them on cell tower mapping sites but they don't show up on any yet.

I took a photo of the bottom of one where it shows some frequencies, but I'm not sure how much power these use or what frequencies they operate at. I posted one shot of a close up of the closest one to me and its connections, another shot showing the full view of the antennas where a technician was working on it the other day. The close up shows in red what looks like 824-960Mhz.

I'm mainly curious about what power these can transmit at, what frequencies, or what type of transmissions (digital/analog). I'm also not sure what that device is attached to the bottom that has other connectors and things attached to the antenna. Its only on one of the antennas in the group.

Click to expand...

Looks like a Triband antenna, Red band, obviously, 800Mhz, going to guess that the third band that you can not see is 1900MHz and the other one that you can see part of is probably 1700/2100MHz. So yes, it is cellular, not positive about power, but because it is 800/1900(probably)/1700/2100(probably)MHz, it will be cellular and it will be digital. Although the antenna is not digital specific, the service will dictate the emission type. The device attached to the bottom, just guessing, will be to shape the pattern of the antenna once coverage testing is done, after the site is commissioned. With this panel style antenna, Each band can be electrically 'tilted' to either expand or contract coverage of the sector. What part of Canada are you in? It will help determine the carrier that is building the site.


Sent from an unknown place...

Thank you for the info, I'm in Windsor Ontario and was told this was installed by Telus. There are 3 sets of these masts on 3 corners of my apartment, each with only 2 antennas on the masts. The center mast left for future use I guess. I checked all the sites that map the antennas and systems but nothing shows for my place. It was just installed last month though.

I noticed reception on my discone has really suffered so trying to think of what to do with it. I'm not sure if moving it away more will help. It was effecting reception on the 800mhz band but seems to be killing my 400mhz reception now also. Trying to find out if I have a problem in my LMR400 first though.

Looks like a Kathrein antenna and I would guess Bell Mobility since Telus hasn't really built anything in Ontario in a while. Their customers all roam on Bell.

The power connections would be for the Remote Electrical Tilt motors.

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Mike,

It is the opposite here in Alberta, Telus is the 3G(WCDMA)/LTE network provider and Bell customers roam on their network, back when Bell and Telus built 3G out Bell did eastern Canada, and Telus did western Canada. The only Bell cellular infrastructure out west is CDMA 1x/EVDO at 1900MHz and even that is somewhat limited to the major centres, when you leave the major centres it is only Telus infrastructure for CDMA. Only the small players and Rogers have independent networks Bell and Telus have worked cooperativly to provide their customers 3G/4G service.

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tilt404 said:

Thank you for the info, I'm in Windsor Ontario and was told this was installed by Telus. There are 3 sets of these masts on 3 corners of my apartment, each with only 2 antennas on the masts. The center mast left for future use I guess. I checked all the sites that map the antennas and systems but nothing shows for my place. It was just installed last month though.

I noticed reception on my discone has really suffered so trying to think of what to do with it. I'm not sure if moving it away more will help. It was effecting reception on the 800mhz band but seems to be killing my 400mhz reception now also. Trying to find out if I have a problem in my LMR400 first though.

Click to expand...

You going to get alot of bleed over from this site being right over head good luck......

ouch

its a good day to move.
sorry to see that.

Yeah its very close, the masts are quite high though, about 15 feet i would say but I know, too close. I posted this shot in another post here:

http://forums.radioreference.com/at...361d1382232677-attenuator-psr800-img_0441.jpg

That shows how close my discone was. That was before the other cell antenna was put up. I just finished moving my discone to the other end of the balcony though and things have really improved. Its about 15 feet away from where it was in the photo above I linked to now. It was washing out completely 800mhz in some cases like detroit police and a local 420mhz LTR system. Just that bit of distance I moved helped. My Diamond X50A had to go 3 feet closer to the cell antennas so will see how that sounds now. The discone is much better at least.

I could be wrong on the Telus name also, its just what I was told by management here. I never saw a name on anything since it was some other contractor doing the install. I can't remember the name on the truck, but it wasn't a cell phone company. It was something more like a tower company of sorts.

My building is literally right on the border with the US here. I'm at the back of the building, on the front there are two others like this on each corner pointing down each east and west coastline of the river. The ones on my side over me point out to the city, south west.

I'll see how things go now since I moved both antennas I have on the balcony. The discone is great so far. Now I'm getting full scale on both for the kelcom 420mhz system which is nice. The discone was no signal before. I had to use a attenuator to hear detroit police before also, and now I don't. I checked my LMR400 feeds also with the multimeter and all was well with them.

Thanks for the help and info on here. Its sad these things can go up without any notice to the people who live in close contact with them. There should be more regulation.

Thank you Mike also for mentioning the tilt motors. I never knew anything like that existed. I found a google page with a patent on the motor stuff

Patente US8217848 - Remote electrical tilt antenna with motor and clutch assembly - Google Patentes

really cool. Trying to learn more about them all now that they've become a part of my life here and health.

We do a lot of cellular work. The carriers hire other companies to install the antennas/lines. They don't do it themselves to shield themselves from liability.

The antenna would give you some issues in 800 if your antenna was too close to it. The biggest issue you may have (which is why it seemed to affect 420 MHz) is that you might get some desense. The front end on the scanner is pretty wide and lets anything in. When you have a transmitter on 800 MHz right next to you, it can cause a lot of problems. The power on the cell sites it typically pretty low (around 10W), but it is enough to cause issues to scanners when your are next to it like that.

fwradio said:

We do a lot of cellular work. The carriers hire other companies to install the antennas/lines. They don't do it themselves to shield themselves from liability.

The antenna would give you some issues in 800 if your antenna was too close to it. The biggest issue you may have (which is why it seemed to affect 420 MHz) is that you might get some desense. The front end on the scanner is pretty wide and lets anything in. When you have a transmitter on 800 MHz right next to you, it can cause a lot of problems. The power on the cell sites it typically pretty low (around 10W), but it is enough to cause issues to scanners when your are next to it like that.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the info, I did notice it was a separate company but forget the name. I think it had 'tower' in the name. It did take me quite a lot of trial and error here since I posted this to finally get good reception on 800mhz with my GRE PSR800 scanner. Its all good now though. I'm actually using a diamond x50a now for the scanner to get the local 800mhz P25 system. Its only a 144/440mhz antenna but maybe its less sensitive at 800 than my comet discone. The discone has been moved about 17 feet away now, and using a difference antenna for 800mhz has helped.

They both were moved to the far end of the balcony now, away from the cell antennas on the roof above me.

I just took a photo now by putting my camera at the end of a broom handle, since there has been roofers working on the roof, and I was curious about the boxes the antennas are connected to up there so here is the image. The shot is looking at the back of the masts, antennas out of view. They feed into these boxes mounted to a pole.

tilt404 said:

Thank you for the info... I just took a photo now by putting my camera at the end of a broom handle, since there has been roofers working on the roof, and I was curious about the boxes the antennas are connected to up there so here is the image. The shot is looking at the back of the masts, antennas out of view. They feed into these boxes mounted to a pole.

Click to expand...

The boxes in the picture are the transmitters, recievers, and PA units. The network interface gear and power supply/battery stack is in the equipment room and is connected to the roof via fibre optic and power cable. This is to keep RF power loss to a minimum as they only have to run short runs of hard line, this also saves money because they can use short runs of 1/2" hardline rather than hundreds of feet of 1 5/8" hardline.

edit:

looks like the multiband receiver is on the left and the individual transmitters/PA are on the right.

kayn1n32008 said:

The boxes in the picture are the transmitters, recievers, and PA units. The network interface gear and power supply/battery stack is in the equipment room and is connected to the roof via fibre optic and power cable. This is to keep RF power loss to a minimum as they only have to run short runs of hard line, this also saves money because they can use short runs of 1/2" hardline rather than hundreds of feet of 1 5/8" hardline.

edit:

looks like the multiband receiver is on the left and the individual transmitters/PA are on the right.

Click to expand...

Thanks again. Sorry my camera is so ancient, I can't get closer. It's only 7MP. On the north side of the roof they put this huge thing on with a crane, the size of a small shed so I guess that is where the rest of the stuff is like the power and control gear. Its been a learning experience for me. Fascinating stuff since I'm into ham radio but all this other stuff is interesting to me. The info on here has been helpful. Glad to hear they are usually low power like the other person said, like 10w.

Using just my handheld ham radio and the diamond x50a antenna I have on my balcony, and using just 0.5w i've been heard at the edges of this county where we are surrounded by water so I'm sure they don't have to use that much power. I guess the antenna itself and its gain could boost that power quite a bit. I forget the whole formula thing from my ham radio exam where they talk about dbm, dbi and eirp. Like the diamond x50a I have and how it has 7.2db of gain on the 70cm band, it gets my little 0.5w out there quite a bit. I imagine the antennas they are using have much more gain so they can use less power.