I have a question I'm not sure how to answer.
We're in the process of installing a permanent 900 MHz antenna at a friend's house. He tested my 7.2 dBi gain 900 MHz whip with a magmount base on his rooftop, and we were wowed by the performance -- especially for non line of sight reception. Various radio propagation modelling programs claim this shouldn't be possible due to miles of obstructions (hills) in between.
I explained to him the perils of coax loss over long lengths. Running 30 to 40 feet of LMR-400 would introduce an additional 0.5 - 1.0 dB of loss compared to the short length of LMR-195 on the magmount. The question I'm having a hard time answering is what effect this will have practically speaking with the distant non-LOS locations, especially at 900 MHz.
Would another 1 dB of loss be the difference between hearing and not hearing a distant non-LOS transmit site? In other words, is non-LOS reception more sensitive to lossy coax and assembly loss?
We're in the process of installing a permanent 900 MHz antenna at a friend's house. He tested my 7.2 dBi gain 900 MHz whip with a magmount base on his rooftop, and we were wowed by the performance -- especially for non line of sight reception. Various radio propagation modelling programs claim this shouldn't be possible due to miles of obstructions (hills) in between.
I explained to him the perils of coax loss over long lengths. Running 30 to 40 feet of LMR-400 would introduce an additional 0.5 - 1.0 dB of loss compared to the short length of LMR-195 on the magmount. The question I'm having a hard time answering is what effect this will have practically speaking with the distant non-LOS locations, especially at 900 MHz.
Would another 1 dB of loss be the difference between hearing and not hearing a distant non-LOS transmit site? In other words, is non-LOS reception more sensitive to lossy coax and assembly loss?