sentech in lonehill / fourways

[vegaskid]

just got mywireless 256 . i live in lonehill , cant sentech get coverage , i live just below their offices and dont have signal.


otherwise the signal in some places is good

in bandwith we trust all others read newspapers

 

[ProAsm]

The sidelobes of the antenna only hit the ground approx 25 meters away from center for every 50 meters in height using a standard tilt of 3 degrees.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue"></center>

 

[hAtE]

vegaskid, did you try the signal booster(s)? There are a huge variety out. Try and give it a test.

-=: Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children :=-

 

[minfrin]

I find the coverage to be shocking just behind Extreme 16, and at Fourways Mall. The Fourways Exchange tower may as well not be there.

Having contacted IPWireless in the UK, I learn there exists testing software and hardware to run signal tests for this equipment that is available to 3G operators.

I learn from Sentech technical support that they have no signal testing equipment available to them _at all_. In other words, they have installed the towers, and have no way of knowing whether they work apart from the lights on the front of the MyWireless device.

 

[dorris]

The fourways Exchange tower only has 2 thirds coverage, it is missing nb1,
/me thinks Sentech forgot about this crucial factor when they removed the Golf Park tower, and hoped fourways exchanges existing 2 nodes would cover their slack!

I haven't really been wardriving lately, but on my last one just over a month ago, I noticed the strangest thing, which was the initial sign of a missing node, when I sat at Billy the bums in that centre opposite monte-casino (on witkoppen) with a perfect view of fourways exchange, I could only get signal from the Golf park!

This forums picked up a lot of activity from the fourways/lonehill side lately, hopefully all of you are interested in a little wireless community , have all of you marked off your positions on Nodedb, lets get the fourways side of the mesh started, I was contacted by another user from the site yesterday, I'm hoping things might start to move by the end of this year!

 

[bdt]

Curiouser and ..actually, not- this doesn't surprise me in the least. I have a file that indicates Fourways Exchange *does* have all 3 nodes- and besides, I'm pretty sure that I've seen panels for all 3 nodes on a driveby eyeballing (hey, I'm a geek working with RF (again)- I can't help myself dammit, I look at antennas all the time!) So- how *does* one explain that tower's extremely piss-poor performance? ..maybe someone forgot to plug the damn node in! Maybe a node-test wardrive is in order? Not that pointing this out would actually HELP anything! *grumble*

vegaskid- you say "just below their offices", not "right by the exchange" -ie the building with the colourful masts with lotsa crap all over 'em in the inside of the curve from William Nicol to Witkoppen. And a quick look at the Braby's map for the area (see http://tinyurl.com/5ef3y (cleaned up, shorter link- the original is horrible) -zoom OUT to 1:40000- shows that Sentech offices would be RIGHT in the meat of the NB1 node- hence no signal there from our craptacular tower at the exchange.

Also, Dorris- this would tend to support similarly pissant signal eastwards,eg- the general vicinity of Lewis and Knox in Lonehill; at a guess I'd put that intersection at roughly 100deg off true north- RIGHT on the edge of the NB2 lobe, no wonder it takes a dish to sniff out signal there. Looking at this I'm somewhat shocked I got the kind of signal level I managed in that area..

 

[bdt]

minfrin- so as not to develop a hernia of the head you'll want to develop a strong "this doesn't surprise me in the least" reflex ASAP. As to not being able to confirm whether a tower works, ignoring ProAsm's excellent software for now and staying with the "official" dialer, it seems like they haven't learnt the advanced art of doing a mouse-over on the [Signal Status] graphic (the tower) on the [Network] tab.. the mind senõr, she boggles!

By now I must be sitting with some pretty useful data- that I've put together with nothing more complicated than a GPS, my WinXP laptop and taking screenshots, for crying out loud! Like I suggest minfrin- "this doesn't surprise me in the least"!