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Author Topic: Antenna Placement  (Read 7072 times)

Will Padgett

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Antenna Placement
« on: September 12, 2016, 08:12:59 PM »

I've got an RF Venue diversity antenna and combiner distro on the way and am needing some advice for placement of the antenna.  My stage is 40' wide and 16' deep. I'm thinking of placing the antenna centered on the 40' wall about 10' above the stage which would require about 30' of cable.  Currently the receivers are stage right almost in the corner in a rack about 2' off the ground.  Bad antenna farm.  I know it is horrible placement hence the new antenna and combiner. 
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 11:14:56 PM by Will Padgett »
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Will Padgett
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Keith Broughton

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2016, 07:20:51 AM »

I think your solution should work fine.
I'm sure you will see a marked improvement in RF level stability.
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Jerome Malsack

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2016, 01:03:48 PM »

My preferred placement is opposite corners.  Front Right and back left. 

This allows the person to turn 360 degrees and the line of site is maintained.  Or you have a better chance to keep the signal. 

Body packs for the guitars will turn and walk this turning will be allowed by either location.
One or the other will be having line of site. 

Use a good sized cable to reduce the line loss.  UHF cable can loose signal after 20 ft.  (RG 8 or better).
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Keith Broughton

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2016, 01:09:35 PM »

My preferred placement is opposite corners.  Front Right and back left. 

This allows the person to turn 360 degrees and the line of site is maintained.  Or you have a better chance to keep the signal. 

Body packs for the guitars will turn and walk this turning will be allowed by either location.
One or the other will be having line of site. 

Use a good sized cable to reduce the line loss.  UHF cable can loose signal after 20 ft.  (RG 8 or better).
The RF Venue diversity antenna is a single device incorporating 2 antenna elements.
One mounting position only.
While good cable is always a great idea, 30' of RG58 at 500 Mhz has only about 3.5 db loss.
That would be made up by the gain of the log periodic element of the antenna.

« Last Edit: September 13, 2016, 01:16:27 PM by Keith Broughton »
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Jason Glass

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #4 on: September 13, 2016, 09:26:09 PM »

The RF Venue diversity antenna is a single device incorporating 2 antenna elements.
One mounting position only.
While good cable is always a great idea, 30' of RG58 at 500 Mhz has only about 3.5 db loss.
That would be made up by the gain of the log periodic element of the antenna.
This is true for the LPDA side, but the dipole side only has 2.1dB gain, putting you in an unfavorable situation on that side that can be easily mitigated by lower loss cable.

Sent from my mobile phone. Please excuse the inevitable spelling and grammatical errors.

Speed Daemon

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2016, 01:18:01 AM »

I've got an RF Venue diversity antenna and combiner on the way and am needing some advice for placement of the antenna.  My stage is 40' wide and 16' deep. I'm thinking of placing the antenna centered on the 40' wall about 10' above the stage which would require about 30' of cable.  Currently the receivers are stage right almost in the corner in a rack about 2' off the ground.  Bad antenna farm.  I know it is horrible placement hence the new antenna and combiner.
Will, are these omni or directional antennas?  If they're omni, you may want to put them high, where they can look down at the stage. Try to have each cover one side of the stage.  If they're directional, you should look at the antenna gain charts, and try to place them so that the lobes cover most of the stage, but from different angles.

If you run into RF signal strength problems, see if there's an RF preamp available. I see that RG58 is mentioned a lot, but you can get lower loss cable such as Times Microwave LMR series that's up to an inch thick.

One thing that I try to do with any diversity system is to play with tilt, as no body pack antenna will be perfectly vertical or horizontal. If in doubt, ask the manufacturer!
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Keith Broughton

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2016, 06:22:18 AM »

This is true for the LPDA side, but the dipole side only has 2.1dB gain, putting you in an unfavorable situation on that side that can be easily mitigated by lower loss cable.

Sent from my mobile phone. Please excuse the inevitable spelling and grammatical errors.
Good point Jason. I had gapped on the other element gain  :-[
Still, this setup, even with modest cost cable, should be considerably better than his current setup.

Quote
Will, are these omni or directional antennas?  If they're omni, you may want to put them high
You talk as if there is more than 1 antenna. There is only ONE device that combines the diversity elements.
Check out the specs on the RF Venue site. It's a rather clever solution  :)

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Diogo Nunes Pereira

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2016, 05:42:13 AM »



You talk as if there is more than 1 antenna. There is only ONE device that combines the diversity elements.
Check out the specs on the RF Venue site. It's a rather clever solution  :)

It's clever in deed. So I went to double check on the specs, and what they (and the pics) show is  one "device" two antennas.

The Diversity Fin has a LPDA with vertical polarization together with an horizontal polarization dipole. And two BNC connectors, so two cables need to run back to your rack.

Maybe it's just the semantics of the word combiner in this matter (RF), but it seems to me there's no combining happening in that PCB.

One element will be the A input, other the B in your diversity receiver or DA.

Sent from my Xylophone using Tapatalk...

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Keith Broughton

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #8 on: September 16, 2016, 06:06:06 AM »



Maybe it's just the semantics of the word combiner in this matter (RF), but it seems to me there's no combining happening in that PCB.

One element will be the A input, other the B in your diversity receiver or DA.


Perhaps I chose the wrong wording.
By "combining" I was refering to having the 2 antenna elements in one fixture not any combining of RF signals.
There are 2 elements and 2 cable runs back to the antenna distro.
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Will Padgett

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #9 on: October 23, 2016, 10:41:04 PM »

I've had the antenna and distro for almost a month. I put the antenna on the light bar just slightly off center, I got 25' rg8x which limited location slightly.  The combination of the 2 antennas in one made placement vastly easier. With the wall being black you have to know its there to find it.  RfVenue has some really solid equipment and highly I recommend it.  Also I'm not tied to specific wireless manufacture for my mics. I have mostly Sennheiser and was going to get their distro, but was warned the dc voltage on the antenna outs might cause problems with shure wireless, of which I still have one ulxp.
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Will Padgett
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Karl Winkler

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #10 on: October 27, 2016, 01:02:07 PM »

I've got an RF Venue diversity antenna and combiner on the way and am needing some advice for placement of the antenna.  My stage is 40' wide and 16' deep. I'm thinking of placing the antenna centered on the 40' wall about 10' above the stage which would require about 30' of cable.  Currently the receivers are stage right almost in the corner in a rack about 2' off the ground.  Bad antenna farm.  I know it is horrible placement hence the new antenna and combiner.

Instead of "combiner" do you mean a "splitter" or a "multicoupler"? You want to take the outputs from the antenna and then split them out to the various receivers, correct?
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Will Padgett

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #11 on: October 27, 2016, 04:09:28 PM »

Instead of "combiner" do you mean a "splitter" or a "multicoupler"? You want to take the outputs from the antenna and then split them out to the various receivers, correct?
Karl

I did mean distro/splitter.  I actually got the RFVenue Distro4.
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Will Padgett
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Keith Broughton

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #12 on: October 27, 2016, 05:33:05 PM »

Karl

I did mean distro/splitter.  I actually got the RFVenue Distro4.
Did you see a marked improvement to your RF stability and reception?
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Will Padgett

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Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2016, 08:54:47 PM »

Did you see a marked improvement to your RF stability and reception?
Keith

I have seen an improvement. I had been trying to get my wireless setup properly for some time and when I started having trouble with my old Shure ULXP I was able to get the budget approved. As a side benefit that I hadn't thought about was the Distro4 letting me getting rid of the Sennheiser wall warts. Thank you for the feedback.
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Will Padgett
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Lubbock,TX

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Antenna Placement
« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2016, 08:54:47 PM »


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