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. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    What min­er did you get? The HNTen­na out­door has an N‑type female con­nec­tion, so your cable con­nec­tor on the anten­na side should be an N‑type male.

  2. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Yes the HNTen­na out­side one. So I prob­a­bly need an Ntype female to con­nect to the male on the anten­na right? And the oth­er end to the min­er I guess I have to research that too. This is almost as con­fus­ing as buy­ing a pres­sure wash­er and try­ing to fit quick con­nects on lol.

  3. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Thanks for the info Nik. I knew from look­ing at images of con­nec­tors that I need­ed a N‑type Male con­nec­tor, prob­lem is, unless it’s just me. The diam­e­ter of the female con­nec­tor seems larg­er than usu­al. Am I right about this? Thank you for every­thing Nik! I can’t wait to get this up on my chimney!

  4. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Gary, it can be con­fus­ing. The con­nec­tor on the out­door HNTen­na is an N‑type Female. You’ll need a cable with an N‑type Male. What min­er do you have?

  5. Luljeta Gjoka Avatar
    Luljeta Gjoka

    Hey Nick are these anten­nas avail­able for Europe I have rak min­ers from calchip!

  6. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Some anten­nas can han­dle a wider fre­quen­cy range than oth­ers. In gen­er­al (and there ARE excep­tions), US anten­nas won’t work well in Europe, and vice ver­sa. HNTen­na is releas­ing a Euro ver­sion soon, check in with them to get the latest.

  7. Jerry Avatar
    Jerry

    Hi Nik, I am con­sid­er­ing set­ting up a 3dbi anten­na on top of my house in the sub­urbs. There is a large tree with­in about 40–50 ft hor­i­zon­tal­ly from where I would place the anten­na. The tree also prob­a­bly has about 30–40 ft addi­tion­al ver­ti­cal height com­pared to the anten­na. Do you think the anten­na you rec­om­mend would be able to get the sig­nal around the tree? 

    There are also quite a few trees around the neigh­bor­hood that are of com­pa­ra­ble size, although none of them are with­in 100 ft. I’m just won­der­ing if the anten­na will even be able to get any sig­nal out at all or if the trees will ruin the signal. 

    The only oth­er option I could think of is to mount the anten­na to the tree and have it com­ing out of the top of it. 

    Thoughts?

  8. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Jer­ry, with all the hor­i­zon­tal dis­tance you should be fine. It’ll punch through a tree no prob; this ain’t 5G. 🙂

  9. corey huguley Avatar
    corey huguley

    I have a few ques­tions and I would to con­tact me on my email. I own 66 acres of land want to mind heli­um on my land. I seen your pic­ture and would like sent up mine like yours. But my ques­tion how do you get great wifi to your out­side miner?

  10. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Corey, check out the off grid post for more on how to do that.

  11. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Great arti­cle! Question:

    Would you antic­i­pate any per­for­mance issues in mount­ing a 3 dbi hotspot anten­na on the same mast as a small omni-direc­tion­al out­door TV anten­na? Will being on the same mast hurt the per­for­mance of the heli­um hotspot anten­na? Does it mat­ter whether the hotspot anten­na is above or below the TV anten­na (oth­er than to say that high­er = better)?

  12. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Should­n’t be an issue, they’re run­ning on dif­fer­ent fre­qs. High­er = better. 😉

  13. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    The Euro­pean HNTen­na is avail­able now… got two! Hope­ful­ly more in the future

  14. Atilla Akdogan Avatar
    Atilla Akdogan

    Hi Nik,
    I am using the bob­cat with the stock anten­na out­side on my patio on a 7th floor apart­ment, would the HNTen­na be a bet­ter option for me? Also what cable would I need Ntype male to rps­ma male? This is a great page you got here my friend kudos. Learned alot and still learning!
    Thank you!

  15. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Atil­la, the HNTen­na will prob­a­bly be a bet­ter option. For your cable you’ll need RP-SMA male to N‑male.

  16. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Hi, we’re not con­nect­ing to any­one and we have hotspots with­in a mile away. We live on a golf course and the line of sight has a wall of 50 foot trees about 200 yards across a few fair­ways from the anten­nae. Beyond that is the club house, which is a pret­ty vast build­ing. The line of sight runs right through the mid­dle of it and the roof is about 20 feet tall. Then there is an open field before it gets to the neigh­bor­hood with the hotspots, but there is anoth­er set of trees and hous­es. I believe we are using the wrong anten­nae which is mount­ed to our chim­ney about 15 feet high from the ground.. Here are the specs:
    High Gain Omni Anten­na For WiFi & Cell 3G 4G LTE (10 DBi) Wide Fre­quen­cy Bands of 698MHz to 960MHz and 1710MHz to 2700MHz

    https://www.signalbooster.com/products/high-gain-omni-antenna-for-wifi-cell-3g-4g-lte-10-dbi

    Should we be using a low­er dB? If so, what would you rec­om­mend. Appre­ci­ate any help.

  17. Justin Miller Avatar
    Justin Miller

    Hi Nik,

    Great info. I’m on a high ele­va­tion but in a ravine that faces the city. So real­ly there’s only 30 degrees where I have a field of view, but that’s all of down­town. That said it’s maybe 20 kilo­me­ters away. You men­tioned this flat pan­el antenna:
    https://www.l‑com.com/wireless-antenna-900-mhz-9-dbi-heavy-duty-flat-panel-antenna
    Would that be my best option? Thanks!

  18. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    That actu­al­ly sounds rea­son­able, give it a shot. 🙂

  19. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Looks like the wrong anten­na to me. Try a RAK 5.8 or the HNTen­na instead.

  20. Lorant Jakab Avatar
    Lorant Jakab

    Is the dia­mond BC 920 worth it? Will min­ing rewards be high­er? Also it says it’s a 9.3 db, will I have lots of prob­lems? My area is Nanaimo but I want to go as far as Van­cou­ver in Cana­da. Should I be buy­ing a low­er db anten­na? Any one you rec­om­mend? I’m 103 ft above sea lev­el, ter­rain rel­a­tive­ly flat in the area, and towards Van­cou­ver. Thanks Nik.

  21. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Lorant,
    Almost no anten­na will make rewards sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er. Remem­ber, 80% of earn­ings come from loca­tion, than 15% from anten­na *ele­va­tion* at that loca­tion, and the last 5% or so from the anten­na choice. Unless there is a super clear rea­son (usu­al­ly extra­or­di­nary dis­tance and no oth­er hs close by) I would steer clear of anten­na gains over 6 dBi. If you’d like a loca­tion assess­ment along with spe­cif­ic anten­na rec­om­men­da­tions for your install, con­sid­er hir­ing us.

  22. $51,273 Month Mining Helium...Placement+Elevation+Antenna - TecHubb

    […] What’s The Best Anten­na For Your Heli­um Hotspot? […]

  23. David Avatar
    David

    Nik,
    Thank you dear­ly for all of the data you’ve pro­vid­ed here. It’s a lot to swal­low for a neo­phyte. But laid out well enough that it makes more sense with addi­tion­al reads.
    You sug­gest ANT-NH900-OUT. All things “equal” (pole, 10 over roof, cab­in­ing) in a mod­er­ate­ly treed sub­ur­ban area that is at about the same ele­va­tion over the path where the major­i­ty of down­town wit­ness­ing is hoped (14 ish Km as the crow flies), do you still sug­gest NH900 over Bob­cat stock? If yes, why?
    I know that there are a high quan­ti­ty of vari­ables that can impact the results here, but just from a lay­man’s per­spec­tive of putting up your sug­gest­ed anten­na vs stock in a sub­ur­ban area and try­ing to wit­ness into the down­town area which is about 10 mi away.

  24. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    David, you’re wel­come. Keep in mind that anten­nas won’t make a huge dif­fer­ence. Line of sight is key, and 14km is pos­si­ble but out at the edge when it comes to prof­itabil­i­ty. Espe­cial­ly with trees (think the flat, well forest­ed mid­west area) it can be a super tough task to con­nect over 14 km. 1–3 km is more rea­son­able. Per­son­al­ly, I’d upgrade the anten­na to an HNTen­na just to wring the last few per­cent­age points of per­for­mance out of it, but it may not be a huge difference.

  25. Gary Titus Avatar
    Gary Titus

    Hey Nik! Sor­ry I just saw I did­n’t answer your ques­tion. We have RAK ver­sion 2 min­er. I still have it on the win­dowsill right now. We had to get the lad­der, light­ning arrester etc. I am so ready to put up the HNT min­er! I was won­der­ing if the nut and wash­er that came with the anten­na would be suf­fi­cient enough to hold it onto the brack­et? We will have it about 25″ in the air which will clear the tree­line and should be high­er than any house or struc­ture in our area. So far we have 5 wit­ness­es with it on the win­dow sill, which is about 10″ up I believe. I also researched my area’s topog­ra­phy on Google earth, and stud­ied where most of the hotspots are. Thank you for all of your help!

  26. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Gary, the mount that comes with the HNT is fine, just make sure you sup­port the pole it’s on. Can’t wait to hear how it does.

  27. What To Look For In A Helium Antenna - One Man's Search

    […] Hot tip up front: Anten­nas have very lit­tle to do with your earn­ings. Most of your earn­ings come from your place­ment, most of the rest comes from how high you can get in that place­ment, and the final lit­tle sliv­er comes from anten­na choice. If you want to go deep into the best anten­na for your Heli­um hotspot, read up on it here. […]

  28. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    Hey Nik! I am attach­ing it to a 38″ j pipe anten­na mast. I have it secured with the pro­vid­ed worm clamps, and I also drilled 2 holes on each side of the mast so its secured by large bolts and curved wash­ers. If the height isn’t suf­fi­cient enough I will use a long sched­ule 40 pvc pipe as well. I will let you know when it goes up!

  29. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    One more ques­tion (for now) Nik. Do you rec­om­mend PVC type con­duit, or gal­va­nized steel? I’m lean­ing toward pvc type, because if I do get 10 foot it will be eas­i­er to set­up. I also think it would sur­vive the weath­er. Your thoughts?

  30. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    I’d go with met­al, but I have a love affair with met­al. As long as the PVC is strong enough, it should be OK short to mid term. Check to make sure what­ev­er you’re using does­n’t dete­ri­o­rate in the sun.

  31. Brad Avatar
    Brad

    Any Rec­om­men­da­tion for some­one that lives on a moun­tain blocked on one side? I have sev­er­al anten­nas to test, but if I want to get a few miles out, below be, would I be bet­ter with an 8DBI Omni or like a 4–5 stan­dard Omni or maybe a directional?

    I love this post BTW, it was super help­ful with the visuals!

  32. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Brad, a 5–6 dBi omni will be fine for that. Best of luck with it!

  33. Marie Avatar
    Marie

    Hi Nik! Love your web­site and I can’t thank you enough for every­thing I’ve learned from you!

    I’m get­ting invalid wit­nessed bea­cons and I don’t under­stand why. It says “witness_rssi_below_lower_bound”. Could this be because I’m using 5.8 and 8dbi anten­nas and the bea­con­ner is too close to my location?

    Would be great to see an arti­cle on the sub­ject since there’s not a lot of infor­ma­tion online!

    Thanks for your help

  34. Tim Heckel Avatar
    Tim Heckel

    Hi Nik — thanks so much for your help! Sil­ly ques­tion — with the Hnten­na, would you run the cable from the anten­na inside to the min­er? Or would you min­i­mize the cable length and put the min­er in an out­door enclo­sure next to it? I assume the for­mer, espe­cial­ly giv­en my cli­mate (MN). Last­ly, you men­tioned above that the bob­cat min­er -> hnten­na would require a “RP-SMA male to N?male” — any links/suggestions where to get one? Thanks again.

  35. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Yep, that’s a like­ly rea­son. It’s fine to have a few of those “out of bounds”, you just don’t want too many. I’ll work on an RSSI article. 🙂

  36. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Not sure I under­stand the ques­tion. The HNTen­na is fine out­side, so you can keep the min­er indoors and then run a cable out to it. If it was me, I always aim to get ’em out­side with short cable runs; those projects are more fun. :). For cable, try USACoax.

  37. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Hi Nik and thans for all the help­ful info. Very much appre­ci­ate the sharing.

    I bought the Flat Pan­el patch anten­na on your rec­om­men­da­tion via the link to L‑Com.

    One ques­tion. You advise to “aim it care­ful­ly”. Any fur­ther elab­o­ra­tion please?

    I am high on a bluff with a moun­tain behind and a vast swath of human­i­ty across flat lands and lots of water.

    Thanks again

  38. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Tom, unlike an omni it’ll only real­ly push out RF in one direc­tion. You prob­a­bly don’t have to be *that* care­ful, just aim it at the mid­dle of that swath and you’ll be fine. Keep me post­ed on how it does!

  39. Brad Avatar
    Brad

    Hi Nik thanks again for all of your won­der­ful advice. I have the 8 dbi work­ing now and doing quite well. Only con­nect­ing to oth­ers 30 — 150km away though, noth­ing close. I may try a direc­tion­al and tilt it a lit­tle [down] as a test. I have a great spot out­side, but no way to pro­tect the unit. If I *did* do a long run to it from indoor to out­door, what would you guess would be a safe length to run to it. I am guess­ing the expo­sure will out­weigh the cable degra­da­tion. I am hop­ing for about 20–25′. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

  40. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Brad, 20–25′ is no prob­lem using LMR400.

  41. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Hi Nik, I am won­der­ing what would be the results con­sid­er­ing two scenarios.

    I have 6 min­ers, 1 in the mid­dle and 5 in each direc­tion at exact­ly 300 meters thus form­ing a pentagon. 

    Sce­nario 1: I am locat­ed in the city and using a 4dbi anten­na at a high ele­va­tion and the sig­nal might be blocked by a few buildings

    Sce­nario 2: I am in a rur­al area that is com­plete­ly flat (let’s assume) and have a 4dbi anten­na as well but there is noth­ing block­ing the sig­nal while all being in the same for­ma­tion at 300 meters.

    Which sce­nario would give me bet­ter gains and will the 8dbi anten­na be bet­ter for the rur­al area or not for my spe­cif­ic situation? 

    Thanks

  42. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Hi Mike,
    Nei­ther of those will earn opti­mal­ly, and there are prob­a­bly bet­ter ways to deploy 6 min­ers. If you’d like to go through those in depth, book a con­sult ses­sion & we’ll go through your entire sce­nario in order to max­i­mize the (con­sid­er­able) advan­tage of hav­ing 6 min­ers in hand.

  43. Easy Helium Outdoor Antenna Upgrade – Tea and Tech Time

    […] What’s The Best Anten­na For Your Heli­um Hotspot? A Rough Guide To Heli­um Hotspot Placement […]

  44. Mitchell Walls Avatar
    Mitchell Walls

    That direc­tion­al you post­ed is ridicu­lous. I am wit­ness­ing peo­ple up to 39km through hun­dreds of tree and build­ings. Only down­side is a rarely but annoy­ing get invalid wit­ness­es for near­er peo­ple but I’ll take see­ing 20 peo­ple ver­sus 3.

  45. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Agree, it was one of my ear­ly installs before I had a bet­ter idea of how to do this. Glad you’re get­ting plen­ty of witnesses!

  46. Jodi Avatar
    Jodi

    Hi Nik, Thank you so much for all the amaz­ing posts. I am about to mount an anten­na on my unused chim­ney in the sub­urbs (flat terrain/1 sto­ry hous­es). I bought a 3dbi and a 5.8db anten­na (to test) + an lmr400 cable to run down my chim­ney. I also bought a light­ning arrester and a #10 AWG ground wire. I am keep­ing the min­er inside as it gets up to 100 degrees in the sum­mer here. 

    After read­ing more about the HNTen­na, I feel like I should just get it. If I do, I will need a new coax and light­ning arrester (dif­fer­ent con­nec­tions) and a new mount. Can you rec­om­mend a mount/pole? Haven’t found much on the internet.

    Last­ly, the HNTen­na links in this arti­cle are bro­ken. It seems hntenna.com has updat­ed their URLs.

  47. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    Thanks, I’ll get those links updat­ed! The out­door HNTen­na comes with a mount. I’d test the anten­nas you have first, get a base­line, see if you’re hap­py with it. Loca­tion & ele­va­tion are way more impor­tant than antennas. 🙂

  48. Can I Get A Witness? - One Man's Search

    […] This helps explain why in many cas­es, when you get that fan­cy super high gain anten­na, your valid wit­ness­es dis­ap­pear. So what anten­na should you buy? […]

  49. Greg Guadagnoli Avatar
    Greg Guadagnoli

    Hi Nik, thanks so much for all your work, this is an amaz­ing resource. The gen­er­al prin­ci­ple of high­er gain means low­er angle is mak­ing sense, but the way I’m look­ing at it makes it appear to me that for an anten­na 50 feet up, the 45º band of a 4dBi hits every­thing from the ground on up start­ing at about 124 feet out, and and 8dBi (25º) hits it at about 235 feet out. I see how that’s a huge dif­fer­ence when you look at them rel­a­tive­ly, but in prac­tice would­n’t you only be miss­ing out hotspots that are with­in that first 235 feet with the 8dBi? What am I miss­ing? Thanks for your help.

  50. Nik Avatar
    Nik

    You’re not miss­ing much there, although every anten­na’s gain pat­tern is dif­fer­ent; check their datasheet for the anten­na to make sure. The oth­er thing that’ll cause prob­lems is high­er gain anten­nas will put you on the wrong side of the RSSI/SNR curve. More on that here.

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