Gristle King - A Guide to DePIN

What’s The Best Antenna For Your Helium Hotspot?

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by

Nik
in

Here is a step by step method for under­stand­ing how to choose the best anten­na for your hotspot place­ment. Each place­ment demands a well matched anten­na in order to pro­vide val­ue to the Heli­um Net­work and con­se­quent­ly earn the most HNT pos­si­ble for that loca­tion. Do NOT, by the way, try to get the giant anten­na in the pic­ture below. While it looks huge and cool and rad, it is the wrong anten­na to use for these deploy­ments. I spent a fair amount of blood and trea­sure to learn that les­son. You don’t need to. 

First: Hotspot place­ment opti­miza­tion is FAR more impor­tant than what anten­na you use, more on that here.

High Mountain antenna placement for Helium in the backcountry of San Diego

Sec­ond, for those of you who just want AN ANSWER: Sim­ple: Pick from the McGill selec­tion. They’ll all work well. 

Put it out­doors at least 10′ above all the build­ings around you. Run 40′ or less of LMR400 cable to it from your hotspot. If you have to go more than 40′, use LMR600 if you’re feel­ing extrav­a­gant. That’ll prob­a­bly get you 80% of the results you could get with far more effort and expertise. 

Wait, you want to actu­al­ly learn and match your anten­na to your sit­u­a­tion so you get the max­i­mum rewards possible?

Ok, let’s start with broad strokes: The anten­na you choose for your hotspot place­ment should match your topog­ra­phy, your ele­va­tion, and your lines of sight.

Let’s start with topog­ra­phy. Topog­ra­phy refers to the build­ings, earth, and water that sur­round, chan­nel, and block your radio sig­nals (prop­a­ga­tion.) The top­ic of radio prop­a­ga­tion involves a tremen­dous­ly deep dive all the way down to the fun­da­men­tals of physics, but we’ll keep it pret­ty simple.

BLUF (Bot­tom Line Up Front) — The flat­ter your topog­ra­phy AND the more trees/vegetation you have block­ing your Line of Sight to oth­er hotspots, the high­er gain anten­na you can use, up to 9 dbi.

Remem­ber, topog­ra­phy isn’t just hills and moun­tains, it includes build­ings, trees, and oth­er obstacles. 

Ok, let’s get dirty! In gen­er­al, earth in the form of moun­tains or hills will block radio sig­nals. Even though a hotspot may seem very close to you, if there’s a hill between the two of you, you prob­a­bly won’t wit­ness each other.

You may check out your loca­tion on the Heli­um Explor­er Cov­er­age map and think you’re per­fect­ly posi­tioned in regards to near­by hotspots, like this:

Remem­ber to check Google Earth!

See how that spot is tucked into a bunch of hills? Unless you put up an anten­na that’ll stick over the top of the hills, you’re restrict­ed to wit­ness­ing only oth­er hotspots in your imme­di­ate area, and in this case, that area is small!

One of the best tools to use when assess­ing a new site is Heli­umVi­sion. Remem­ber, loca­tion is FAR more impor­tant than anten­nas. If you’d like to learn more about Heli­umVi­sion (I use it in every one of my con­sults) I’ve built a Mas­ter Class on it, over here.

Ok, so that’s earth. Earth = No Radio Waves Get­ting Through.

What about build­ings? How much will build­ings block or reduce the pow­er of radio propagation? 

Accord­ing to a study done in 2012 on a wide swath of build­ing mate­ri­als and focus­ing on the GSM 900 MHz band, a rein­forced con­crete wall that is 20cm / ~8″ thick will atten­u­ate the sig­nal by 27 dB. An inte­ri­or plas­ter wall will reduce pow­er by any­where from .8 to 3 dB.

What does that mean? Dis­claimer: RF geeks, I’ma get loose with terms here. Relax.

This reduc­tion in pow­er is called “atten­u­a­tion.” In gen­er­al with radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions, you don’t want any atten­u­a­tion. Atten­u­a­tion can hap­pen with earth, build­ings, forests, and even win­dow coat­ings. How much pow­er will you lose? Let’s run some numbers.

Amer­i­can based hotspots start off by push­ing out 27 dBm. Euro­pean and oth­er areas start WAY low­er, at 14. Add the gain (dBi) from your anten­na and sub­tract the loss­es from any con­nec­tions to fig­ure out your Effec­tive Isotrop­ic Radi­at­ed Pow­er (EIRP).

That means a 6 dBi anten­na will give you 33 dBm of EIRP with a US hotspot. 27dBm + 6dBi = 33dBm in the direc­tion of anten­na gain. Now you’ve got to cal­cu­late cable and con­nec­tion loss.

As a rough rule of thumb, each con­nec­tion (hotspot to anten­na cable, anten­na cable to anten­na, or going through an enclo­sure wall using a con­nec­tor) will drop your EIRP by .5 dB. Cable loss­es vary by cable, which is why most peo­ple use a “low loss” cable like LMR400. If you want to run your EIRP num­bers, here’s how.

Ok, ok, ok, why does it mat­ter whether or not you know your EIRP? 

Let’s take a short detour into dBm and pow­er. dBm is based on a log­a­rith­mic scale. For every increase of 3 dBm, there is twice as much pow­er out­put. Every increase of 10 dBm has a ten­fold increase in pow­er. The dif­fer­ence between a 3 dBi anten­na (what most hotspots ship with) and an after­mar­ket 9 dBi anten­na is a fac­tor of 4! 

Of course, that 4x pow­er comes at a cost; the beam is focused; more laser and less light­bulb. That means that unless you aim your anten­na very care­ful­ly, you can blast all that pow­er into places that have no hotspots.

Here is a great exam­ple demon­strat­ing atten­u­a­tion and topog­ra­phy. This hotspot is placed on the north side inside a build­ing. It’s up high with a high­er gain anten­na, and in gen­er­al, inac­cu­rate­ly aimed over most of the near­by hotspots.

Most of the wit­ness­es it’s get­ting are fur­ther north. Some of the sig­nals bounce off to the side, prov­ing that “RF is weird.” 

To the south, the sig­nals are blocked or atten­u­at­ed by inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or walls, but appar­ent­ly there is a small win­dow or open­ing where those weak­ened sig­nals are escap­ing, then going pret­ty far over the water. Pret­ty neat, right? I mean, not for the hotspot own­er, but it’s a neat demon­stra­tion of the concept.

That image is also a great exam­ple of why you should nev­er put a hotspot anten­na inside; you are los­ing a ton of pow­er before the radio waves ever get out­side the building.

Water allows radio sig­nals to trav­el much fur­ther than nor­mal; look at any hotspot next to a body of water and you’ll see it will con­nect with oth­er hotspots at much fur­ther ranges across the water than it will across land. 

Let’s not get too into the weeds here. As I said at the begin­ning, the gen­er­al rule for topog­ra­phy is this: The flat­ter your topog­ra­phy, the high­er gain anten­na you can use, up to 9 dBi for 95% of place­ments. Beyond 9 the pat­tern gen­er­al­ly gets too pre­cise to pro­vide the Wide cov­er­age (the W in WUPU) that we want.

Remem­ber, topog­ra­phy includes not just hills, moun­tains, and water, but all the build­ings, bridges, and oth­er struc­tures that might block your radio sig­nal. Cities in gen­er­al do not have a flat topog­ra­phy, even if they’re built on flat land. All those spiky build­ings stick­ing out will gob­ble up your radio signals.

That brings us to ELEVATION. If you want to bend your mind a lit­tle bit, think about this: The high­er your ele­va­tion, the flat­ter the rel­a­tive topog­ra­phy is, and the LOWER dbi anten­na you can use. Wait, what?

Remem­ber, a high dbi anten­na focus­es the sig­nal of your anten­na. In an omni anten­na (we’ll get to direc­tion­al or sec­tor anten­nas in a minute), that shape becomes a flat­ter and flat­ter plane. If that plane is super flat, it’ll fly right over the tops of all those hotspots you want to hit. Let’s go through 3 examples.

Now, those aren’t how it *actu­al­ly* works. The gain pat­terns are nowhere near as dif­fer­ent, and a high gain anten­na will STILL hit the ground with­in 1,000′ of even a 100′ build­ing. Still, you can see why in *most* cas­es, you want a low or medi­um gain anten­na up high.

You can also run that idea back­wards; if you’re in a real­ly flat area where you don’t have a lot of obsta­cles, a high gain anten­na might be your best bet. Still, most peo­ple don’t live in the desert, and the flat­test state in Amer­i­ca has a ton of trees on it. If that’s your sce­nario, get a high gain (6–9 dBi) anten­na up over the tops of those trees for max­i­mum coverage. 

That brings us in a round­about way to Lines of Sight. Remem­ber that $39 paper I quot­ed ear­li­er regard­ing how much RF ener­gy a giv­en build­ing mate­r­i­al would absorb? The gen­er­al take­away for us Heli­um Hotspot own­ers is this: Our anten­nas won’t blast through much more than 2 build­ings.

That means if you’re INSIDE the build­ing, you’ve burned most of the ener­gy of the anten­na just get­ting out­side the walls. If it hits just one more “thing”, whether it’s a build­ing, a tree, or a bill­board, that’s prob­a­bly the end of the line.

This “Lines of Sight” idea has an impor­tant impli­ca­tion in under­stand­ing how some of the top earn­ing hotspot/antenna com­bos are doing so well. The hotspot Docile Bone Pony* (when this was writ­ten, one of the high­est earn­ers in the world) is on top of a 16 sto­ry build­ing in a major city with a medium/high gain anten­na (8 dbi from eBay on 60′ of LMR400.) It has Lines of Sight to a lot of oth­er hotspots, BUT those oth­er hotspots don’t have great lines of sight to oth­er hotspots around ’em.

That means that DBP is see­ing a lot of hotspots that AREN’T see­ing a lot of hotspots. I’m going to anthro­po­mor­phize this a bit, but their only option is to com­mu­ni­cate with DBP. So they do. And DBP earns like crazy. It’s an exam­ple of the incred­i­ble earn­ing poten­tial that exists when pro­vid­ing asym­met­ric val­ue to the network.

While we’re on Lines of Sight, let’s talk about the range of a stan­dard hotspot. Accord­ing to some excel­lent work done by the inim­itable @para1 on Dis­cord, most hotspots do most of their wit­ness­ing with­in a 10km range. Now, an in depth dis­cus­sion of the impli­ca­tions and restric­tions of this table is beyond the scope of this arti­cle, but your gen­er­al take­away should be “Opti­mize your anten­na for hot­pots with­in 10 km” aka most peo­ple don’t need a high gain antenna.

@para1’s table, post­ed in Discord

I’ll dou­ble tap this range thing with an exam­ple of a hotspot I run, which has a 3 dBi HNTen­na on top of a 20′ pole on top of a ~30′ build­ing. It *rou­tine­ly* gets wit­ness­es over 200km away. While it seems that a high gain anten­na will get you bet­ter range, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. It’s Line of Sight that is the secret here.

Final­ly, Lines of Sight can be blocked by forests. Depend­ing on who you lis­ten to, LoRa does­n’t go through much more than 60 meters of dense for­est. I’m sor­ry rur­al Flori­da, you’ve just got a tough row to hoe on that one. Dense for­est in between you and oth­er anten­nas is about the only time a high­er gain (up to 9 dBi) makes sense, and even then it may not make a giant dif­fer­ence. Forests are RF sinks.

There is one more thing to think about with Lines of Sight. The 900 MHz fre­quen­cy needs some run­way, ide­al­ly 50′/15m to fan out enough to dif­fract around obsta­cles. Read that again and you’ll have an advan­tage over every­one who does­n’t get that concept.

The con­cept of Fres­nel zones and dif­frac­tion in radio wave com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the fun­da­men­tal dri­vers of the “RF is weird” refrain you’ll hear when­ev­er you see a pat­tern that does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly make sense. Basi­cal­ly, the fur­ther out your radio waves go, the more they can spread out along their radi­a­tion pat­tern, the less like­ly that all of the waves get blocked, and the more like­ly that at least some of ’em will get to anoth­er hotspot. 

At some dis­tance they’re so spread out that you’re basi­cal­ly not going to make a con­nec­tion, so the effec­tive “win­dow” shrinks back down. Like this:

Check out RadioMo­bile to get deep on Fres­nel zones.

If you set up your anten­na so that you’ve got lots of clear space around it before it hits obsta­cles, those radios waves have enough spread to start “bend­ing around” those obsta­cles. This is yet anoth­er rea­son not to set up inside. 

Here’s anoth­er “I def­i­nite­ly did­n’t go to art school” draw­ing to demon­strate the idea of run­way and diffraction.

If you give those radio waves some room to spread out, they can get around obsta­cles. Let ’em breathe!

Ok, we’ve got one more thing to con­sid­er before wrap­ping up. Many of you will have been scour­ing ham radio sites to fig­ure out how to improve the range of your anten­na. Keep in mind that the goal of many ham radio oper­a­tors is incred­i­ble range, but that can come at the cost of broad cov­er­age. Doing exact­ly what a ham oper­a­tor does may give you the results they want, not what you want.

YOU want to hit as many high scale hotspots as pos­si­ble. You’ll usu­al­ly do that by using a low gain anten­na up high, with clear lines of sight all around.

Remem­ber, you’ll earn the most by deliv­er­ing the most valu­able & prov­able cov­er­age to the net­work. The con­cept is sim­ple. The exe­cu­tion can be com­pli­cat­ed. If you want help with get­ting the max­i­mum val­ue out of your place­ments or strat­e­gy, I’m avail­able for hire.

For those of you who skipped all that and just want to know what anten­na to get, here are 4 gen­er­al­ly good options for the 3 most com­mon scenarios.

  1. In a build­ing in the city? Get an out­door HNTen­na or a McGill in the 3–6 dBi range, put it out­side up as high as you can.
  2. In a build­ing where you just can’t get up high? Use the stock anten­na that came with your hotspot. Also, find a bet­ter place­ment loca­tion. You did read about that, right?
  3. In a sub­ur­ban house? Get either the HNTen­na or a McGill in the 3–6 dBi range and put it on a pole out­side and up high.
  4. On a moun­tain where you can’t pos­si­ble trans­mit behind you (because the moun­tain will block your sig­nal) and you have an enor­mous view of civ­i­liza­tion and your near­est hotspot is more than 5 miles away? Try a 8–9 dBi patch anten­na, like these.

I’ll round this out with what to def­i­nite­ly NOT do. Don’t just look at the gain of an anten­na and think high­er is bet­ter. Don’t both­er with Yagi anten­nas. Final­ly, don’t wor­ry too much about your anten­na. In the big pic­ture of earn­ings, it is FAR more impor­tant to have good place­ment and ele­va­tion. The fan­ci­est, coolest, most high tech anten­na in the world won’t get you much if you’re in a crap­py loca­tion down low.

Best of luck with your place­ment and earn­ings, I’m stoked to be a part of this amaz­ing com­mu­ni­ty! If you’re look­ing for work in the Heli­um ecosys­tem, check out  Heli­um Jobs. You can post and find jobs there, help sup­port the ecosys­tem by mak­ing it eas­i­er to con­nect pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and let the world know that YOU exist and want to help con­tribute with­in the Net­work. Rock on!

Resources and Further Reading

A deep­er dive into under­stand­ing how RF works.

Cal­cu­lat­ing RF Pow­er Val­ues (explains why a 6 dBi anten­na dou­bles your power)

900 MHz: The Wire­less Work­horse. (Prob­a­bly why Heli­um chose LoRa)

List of Helium Hotspots & Their Antennas

Before you read this and assume that you must have a high gain anten­na in order to get great earn­ings, please keep in mind that these hotspot own­ers are gen­er­al­ly tin­ker­ers and often have some exper­tise in RF the­o­ry. The results are a lit­tle skewed because of that.

UPDATE: Heli­umVi­sion now reports this for all hotspot own­ers who have entered this on Heli­um app. I’ve closed sub­mis­sions on this page. 

Docile Bone Pony — Ele­va­tion: 16 sto­ries, Area: Greater Boston, MA. Anten­na: 8 dbi omni from eBay, Cables: 60′ of LMR400

Sweet Sage Pike — Ele­va­tion: 43′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: Near­son 9, Cables: 5′ of LMR400

Chilly Blood Mon­goose — Ele­va­tion: 41′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: Laird FG9026 (6 dbi), Cables: 5′ of LMR400

Lucky Men­thol Wasp — Ele­va­tion: 60′ above ground, Area: San Diego, CA. Anten­na: RAK 5.8 dbi, Cables: 11′ LMR400

Nice Lip­stick Chim­panzee — Ele­va­tion: 25′ above ground, Area: San Fran­cis­co, CA. Anten­na: RFMAX | ROSA-900-SNF, Cables: 5′ LMR240

Inter­est­ing Pearl Star­ling — Ele­va­tion: 35′ above ground, Area: North Shore, MA. Anten­na: RAK 5.8 dbi, Cables: RAK pig­tail inter­face con­vert­er bun­dled with antenna

Jumpy Iron Fer­ret — Ele­va­tion: 34th sto­ry, Area: Chica­go, IL. Anten­na: Stock, Cables: N/A. Indoor setup.

Kind Infrared Lynx — Ele­va­tion: 15′ above ground, Area: Den­ver, CO. Anten­na: Tao­glas 8 dbi. Cables: 15′ LMR400

Lucky Dijon Scal­lop — Ele­va­tion: 33′ above ground. Area: Engle­wood, CO. Anten­na: RAK 8 dbi. Cables: RAK pig­tail cable

Sticky Pear Dol­phin — Ele­va­tion: 311′ above ground (moun­tain). Area: San Fran­cis­co, CA. Anten­na: Oukeione 3 dbi. Cables: Bingfu

Petite Men­thol Leop­ard — Ele­va­tion 25′. Area: Napa, CA. Anten­na: 5.8 RAK. Cables: Bingfu

Best Tan­ger­ine Racoon — Ele­va­tion: Sec­ond Floor Win­dow. Area: Bay­onne, NJ Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: 1m pigtail

Warm Juniper Pan­ther — Ele­va­tion: 4th floor rooftop. Area: Bay­onne, NJ Anten­na: Near­son 9 dBi. Cables: 4′ LMR400

Scrawny Egg­plant Pan­da — Ele­va­tion: 35′ Area: Lake­wood, OH Anten­na 4 dBi Mul­ti­pole Cables: N/A

Ancient Cider Grasshop­per — Ele­va­tion: 40′ Area: Kansas City, MO Anten­na: RAK Wire­less 8 dBi Cables: 30′ LMR400

Oblong Slate Platy­pus — Ele­va­tion: 400′ Area: New York City, NY Anten­na: Prox­i­cast 10 dBi Cables: LMR400

Ripe Banana Gob­lin — Ele­va­tion: 2nd floor win­dow Area: Van­cou­ver, BC Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: N/A

Trendy Rain­bow Lizard — Ele­va­tion: 1st floor win­dow Area: Van­cou­ver, BC Anten­na: Stock 3 dBi Cables: N/A

Striped Pewter Osprey — Ele­va­tion: 20′ Area: Los Ange­les, CA Anten­na: RAk 5.8 Cables: LMR400

Comments

491 responses to “What’s The Best Antenna For Your Helium Hotspot?”

  1. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    Nik, I’ve got a white 5.8 on the way. Will it be ok for me to paint blacK? Every­thing I’ve read about paint­ing anten­nas says to you paints with no met­al­ic prop­er­ties so I’d def­i­nite­ly do that. I live in a neigh­bor­hood with a very strict HOA so I’m try­ing to keep it as dis­creet as possible. 

    Thanks

  2. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Doug, should­n’t be a prob­lem as long as the paint does­n’t have any met­al in it.

  3. dominick dercole Avatar
    dominick dercole

    any­one using an 18dbi?

  4. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure hope not, that’d be ille­gal in the US plus way too high for any prof­itable use.

  5. Galen Schlich Avatar
    Galen Schlich

    Thank you for all of this great info.

  6. Calvin Avatar
    Calvin

    Hi Nik,

    I am going to place my hotspots on the top of a hill (~50m ele­va­tion) and top of a high-rise apart­ment (~120m ele­va­tion), should I stick with the stock 4.2 dbi anten­na (Bob­cat min­er) or upgrade to the 5.8 dbi RAK? Giv­en the high ele­va­tion I am wor­ried that the lat­ter might cause me to miss too many low ele­va­tion hotspots. What do you think? I live in Chi­na so the fre­quen­cy there is 470mHz.

    Thanks

  7. Douglas Johnson Avatar
    Douglas Johnson

    I live in a com­mu­ni­ty with a strict HOA so I am try­ing to be dis­creet. I will be mount­ing my 5.8dbi anten­na on the side of the house up close to the roof line. It will be posi­tioned par­al­lel to the house about 2 inch­es away from the vinyl sid­ing. Is two inch­es enough space or does it need to be posi­tioned fur­ther away from the house? Remem­ber, try­ing to be discreet.

  8. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Calvin, you’ll prob­a­bly be fine with the stock. Depends on how far away oth­er min­ers are, but usu­al­ly the stock anten­na works very well.

  9. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The fur­ther away the bet­ter, but sounds like you’re con­strained by HOA. Look into OTARD, you may have more lee­way than you think. 

  10. Chance Carpenter Avatar
    Chance Carpenter

    Hi Nik,
    I recent­ly set up Jumpy Fern Cop­per­head in Scotts­dale AZ. I placed the RAK in a cus­tom-mod­i­fied out­door enclo­sure and pur­chased a 5.8dbi fiber­glass anten­na and 25′ LMR-400 cable with .96dbi loss. It’s mount­ed on a pine tree next to our house. The anten­na is mount­ed to a 1″ sched­ule 40 PVC that’s about 15′ long and that is mount­ed to the trunk of the tree. The anten­na peaks above the top of the canopy about 2′ and is pret­ty much ver­ti­cal and at around 30′ off the ground. 

    I’m cur­rent­ly see­ing 10 wit­ness­es and earn­ings are decent at around 35 HNT per week so far. I’m not unhap­py with that but what I’m notic­ing is that I’m hit­ting some wit­ness­es that are real­ly quite far away (one is near­ly 50km) and miss­ing a TON that are quite near­by. This makes me pre­sume that this con­fig­u­ra­tion is ‘shoot­ing over the top’ of those near­by hotspots. That said, in look­ing at Helium.Vision I am notic­ing that a bunch of those near­by hotspots are online but not real­ly con­nect­ed to oth­er hotspots near them and aren’t earn­ing much HNT at all. This makes me assume they just set them up in a win­dowsill and are hop­ing for the best (which is what I basi­cal­ly had to do for the first week while I wait­ed for my anten­na and cable arrived). 

    So I’ve pur­chased a 40CM long fiber­glass anten­na that is 3.0dbi and am con­sid­er­ing swap­ping out the 5.8 for the 3.0 and see­ing if that allows me to con­nect to more of those that are clos­er. I also have 10 more Bob­cat hotspots on order and plan to posi­tion them near-ish to my home and want to make sure I can con­nect to them. 

    Does this make sense? I’d great­ly appre­ci­ate any input. 

    Thanks for pub­lish­ing ALL this GREAT con­tent and break­ing it down for us Nubes. Your writ­ing is suc­cinct and clear and I real­ly appre­ci­ate all the links to great resources and the research you’ve pro­vid­ed here for FREE. I’d also love to learn more about how to lever­age and USE the net­work — not just pro­vide it and earn from it. Any tips on that would also be appreciated.

  11. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Chance, sounds like a good plan to drop the gain down and “globe out” the pat­tern. I’d also think about buying/building a map­per and dri­ving around to map near those oth­er HS, just to see if they’re actu­al­ly work­ing. You can buy an Ade­u­nis (pricey and frag­ile, it’s what I have but not rec­om­mend­ed), a GLAMOS Walk­er (the cur­rent hot­ness, prob­a­bly a lit­tle tweaky but a far bet­ter option than the Ade­u­nis) or build your own (eas­i­ly the coolest option.) Let me know what you find!

  12. Calvin Avatar
    Calvin

    Thanks a lot Nik. Also if I were to mount the anten­na out­side the win­dow on my apart­ment (48th floor, top floor is 56) , would I then be just cap­tur­ing only the hotspots on the direc­tion that the win­dows is fac­ing (as opposed to 360 degree with plac­ing the anten­na up high on the top of the apartment)?

    Thanks again,
    Calvin

  13. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Calvin, when you say “on top” of the apart­ment, does that mean on top of the build­ing or just up high in your apart­ment? On top of the build­ing will be the pre­ferred place­ment, but if you can’t get that then get­ting it out­side the win­dow should be the next best option for you.

  14. Brandon Avatar
    Brandon

    Have you seen any fiber­glass anten­nas attached to a chim­ney? If so, any sug­ges­tions on attach­ing? That would be the high­est spot on my house.

  15. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, plen­ty of ’em. Look for a “chim­ney Y mount” and use a pole to get it high­er. Rock on!

  16. Martin Avatar
    Martin

    Hi there, I’m think­ing about installing my out­door nebra min­er With a 5.8 DBI Anten­na. I’m won­der­ing, if you have any insight. This would be in a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area in San­ta Clara Coun­ty. It will be installed on the sec­ond floor of my house. Do you think I could make more if I was to install a 3DBI anten­na instead? Any advice would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed, cheers

  17. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Prob­a­bly not a huge dif­fer­ence between the two, although that can depend on the install a bit. I’d test ’em both just to be sure, but I bet you won’t see a huge difference.

  18. Kenny Avatar
    Kenny

    Hi Nik,
    This is a great arti­cle, helped a lot to get a clue how this works. Im in the UK, and wait­ing for my bob­cat min­er 300. The area where I live is sub­ur­ban with com­mon 2 floor hous­es, but there are not too many HS around me. I beleive I would go with the 5.8dbi anten­na, but could­n’t find any of those you men­tioned and in stock (5.8dbi, eu868, for out­door use). I would appre­ci­ate if you could send me a link about a great example.
    Many thanks

  19. Kenny Avatar
    Kenny

    I mean all I found is for pre order, and none of them are the same as what you men­tioned and nonone has them in stock.

  20. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Right on Ken­ny, glad it helped. This is my go-to anten­na for 95% of all deploy­ments going for­ward, though I’m not sure what ship­ping will be from the US to UK.

  21. Kenny Avatar
    Kenny

    Thank you for your answer.
    Do you think it is also a good choice?
    https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005001830636995.html?spm=a2g0n.detail.0.0.1efbK5dkK5dktY&gps-id=storeRecommendH5&scm=1007.18500.187585.0&scm_id=1007.18500.187585.0&scm-url=1007.18500.187585.0&pvid=15c0f474-a313-4bf1-bbee-f82aca972736&_t=gps-id%3AstoreRecommendH5%2Cscm-url%3A1007.18500.187585.0%2Cpvid%3A15c0f474-a313-4bf1-bbee-f82aca972736%2Ctpp_buckets%3A668%230%23131923%2322_668%230%23131923%2322_668%23888%233325%2310_668%23888%233325%2310_668%232846%238113%231998_668%235811%2327182%2352_668%232717%237567%23937__668%233374%2315176%23832_668%232846%238113%231998_668%235811%2327182%2352_668%232717%237567%23937_668%233164%239976%23485_668%233374%2315176%23832&browser_id=3f4615d320884e65a7708e05c0e44033&aff_trace_key=eb5d1953c7c44735b229191673177008-1621767818556–04622-UneMJZVf&aff_platform=msite&m_page_id=wqiqgsptyjwcavid17998e6221419fff680bc7a498&gclid=CjwKCAjw-qeFBhAsEiwA2G7Nl-RTd4OiIMNxa74MWiToCeojecV6q-TxIAmczvMopChAsDhrT5GUcRoCzWgQAvD_BwE

  22. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Sure.

  23. matt Avatar
    matt

    Hey Nic. I live on a moun­tain or large hill, about 200m above sea lev­el there are lot of trees around. Around 5km from me the hill drops down to a large city. Do you think it would be pos­si­ble to hit any hotspots down there and if so what would be the best set up? Thanks in advanced.

  24. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hey Matt, prob­a­bly. Check it on Heli­umVi­sion, you can run an RF sim­u­la­tion from your pro­posed spot and have a pret­ty good idea of what you’ll hit. Rock on!

  25. Rudolph Avatar
    Rudolph

    Nik,

    Thank you for the excel­lent arti­cles and response to ques­tions. I’m going to mount an anten­na on the roof of my apart­ment (out­side) but the near­est hotspot is 2miles away, and I’d real­ly like to hit some more in the 5mi range. Is your rec­om­mend­ed anten­na still appro­pri­ate in that sit­u­a­tion, or would a high­er dbi rat­ing be better?

  26. Rudolph Avatar
    Rudolph

    By the way, those moun­tains look famil­iar, are you the ven­er­a­ble Atom­ic Vanil­la Locust?

  27. Robert Engelbrecht Avatar
    Robert Engelbrecht

    Nik. I’m 60′ up on top of a small con­do build­ing ( Amus­ing Pis­ta­chio Python, Bob­cat 300 + sup­plied anten­na ). What would your fave ANT-NH900-OUT have as pos­si­ble advantage/s ?. Thank you for all the valu­able info you share with us ! !

  28. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Nope, that’s anoth­er hs own­er. I’ve got Ama­teur Jade Hare. 🙂

  29. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    The HNTen­na will be your best bet. I’ve got one that’s hit­ting over 100 km shots. It’s all about anten­na ele­va­tion & line of sight, not about gain.

  30. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Should work as well or bet­ter than any oth­er anten­na out there. That’s what I’m using on all my setups going forward.

  31. Chase Avatar
    Chase

    Hi Nik, thank you for all of the great insights. I’m con­sid­er­ing a Bob­cat min­er that comes with a 4dbi anten­na, but based on your research, I real­ize a 5.8 — 8 dbi anten­na could yield bet­ter earnings.

    My apart­ment build­ing is a hol­low rec­tan­gle. I live on the 2nd floor (14 ft from the ground) with a bal­cony that faces inward. If I set up my min­er on the top 4th floor, unless there’s a way to lock the cables, its fate would be left to chance that the apart­ment staff over­look it AND no one steals it, but up there it would face out­ward and would have plen­ty of room to dif­fract properly.

    With one near­by hotspot with­in 81m of my address and 6 oth­ers rough­ly between 500m — 1km away, would it be rea­son­able to expect sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent results if it faced the inside of my build­ing vs. the 4th floor fac­ing outward?

  32. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Always bet­ter with clear LoS, but you can’t always get that. This might be an instance where the HNTen­na will real­ly shine.

  33. Robert Engelbrecht Avatar
    Robert Engelbrecht

    Can you sug­gest anoth­er anten­na oth­er than your fave ANT-NH900-OUT ? They don’t seem able or pre­pared to ship to Canada

  34. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Robert,
    Sure, try this Laird.

  35. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    Thanks Nik. I already have Par­ley­labs 5.8dBi & 8Bbi anten­nas here ( https://shop.parleylabs.com/products/rak-fiber-glass-lorawan-antenna-us915?variant=37264623468723 ) . Would they be much worse than the Laird you suggested ?

  36. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Nope, about the same.

  37. Lynn Avatar
    Lynn

    Thanks for help­ing all of us. Very kind

  38. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    Nik, Thank you for all your insight.

    I have 2 RAK and 4 Bob­Cat’s on order and plan on deploy­ing them in a town of 125k with only one exist­ing hotspot cur­rent­ly. All place­ments will be on home rooftops. I plan on mount­ing a 20′ anten­na to the chim­ney with the Min­er and Hotspot in a weath­er proof box at the base and good cable up to anten­nas. Hav­ing read some of your advice I under­stand the ben­e­fit of the hotspot being w/in 5′ of the anten­na, how­ev­er, this area has spo­radic high winds and ant extra weight up high is an issue. Is the sig­nal loss pre­ventable with bet­ter cable? Or is there anoth­er direc­tion I should look into/

  39. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Don’t sweat 20′ if you’re using LMR400 cable.

  40. J Avatar
    J

    I am look­ing at the HNTENNA, how­ev­er I dont see any­where where it mounts? The pic­tures just show it kind of float­ing, and I am try­ing to pur­chase all match­ing parts at once and am not sure what kind of mount or pole is needed.

  41. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    It mounts to a right angle bar that comes with the pack­age. You mount the bar to the pole, it has a flat part that sticks out at 90. The HNTen­na mounts on that.

  42. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    Hey Nik, real­ly appre­ci­ate you and these arti­cles. I’m in a build­ing, urban set­ting, 8th floor, but on a hill so I’m high­er than every­thing for hun­dreds of meters in front of me and some slices of my view are unob­struct­ed for miles. Would the ANT-BH900-IN make much of a dif­fer­ence in my case? Thank you!

  43. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    With unob­struct­ed views you may not see a huge dif­fer­ence. Small dif­fer­ences can add up over time though. I look at it this way: At $120 more than the cheap anten­na, I’m get­ting the best thing on the mar­ket (MP Anten­na holds patents on their mul­ti polar­ized anten­nas.) With HNT at $15, if hav­ing the anten­na earns me just 8 extra HNT it’ll pay for itself.

  44. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    Thanks Nik. I’m try­ing to square the con­cepts in your arti­cle with your pri­ma­ry rec­om­mend­ed anten­na. You show in that draw­ing and write that a medi­um gain anten­na at rel­a­tive­ly high ele­va­tion is almost always best. How­ev­er, the anten­na you rec­om­mend for most setups boasts a 3 dbi gain, which seems like a low gain com­pared to the 9 dbi max. Am I miss­ing something?

  45. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Typ­i­cal­ly with Heli­um, the low­er the gain you can use the more wit­ness­es you’ll have as it won’t break the RSSI/SNR curve. Any­thing above 6 usu­al­ly starts cre­at­ing more invalid wit­ness­es than you want. Remem­ber, the type of anten­na you put on has far less effect than the ele­va­tion it’s at or the loca­tion it’s in. Don’t get too twist­ed up about gain.

  46. michael scott Avatar
    michael scott

    60CM High Gain Long Range Wide Band 3G 4G LTE Cel­lu­lar Omni Direc­tion­al Fiber­glass Anten­na for 4G LTE Route…
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    $89.99
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    Only 17 left in stock — order soon.
    will these work for the rak miner?
    they are on amazon

  47. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    With­out see­ing the details on it, I would­n’t say yes. I’d go with an HNTen­na; they’re built for Heli­um by folks who know what they’re doing.

  48. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Hi Nik!
    We just got our heli­um min­er and ordered the anten­na you rec­om­mend­ed. Our LMR 400 cable that we pur­chased Ntype female to sma male I believe. This does not fit the diam­e­ter to the screw on con­nec­tor for the anten­na. The anten­na thread­ed con­nec­tor is quite large. Any help would be great!

  49. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Gary, check over on the con­nec­tions page and see if you can match the pic­tures up to what you have. Also, I think you’ll want an RP-SMA male, not an SMA Male.

  50. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Hey Nik thanks for get­ting back to me so quick! I already pur­chased an Rp-SMA Male to n female and that’s not cor­rect. I need the one that can screw on to the HNTen­na and that I believe is the N type male but I will look. None of the ends will fit so the RP-SMA Male is incor­rect no doubt. I will check the con­nec­tions page if I can find it. Thanks again.

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