✅ New Tools For Locating Your Tower and Signal Line of Sight - External Antenna Aiming

Summary

In this video, Nater Tater introduces new and improved tools for determining the line of sight from your home to a cell tower. He compares visual line of sight with radio frequency (RF) line of sight and introduces several online resources, such as link.ui.com and towermaps.com, to locate and aim external antennas more accurately. The video walks through a step-by-step guide to using these tools to optimize your internet connection by finding the best signal reception.

Highlights

• Explore a new way to locate your cellular tower with updated tools! 🗺️
• Learn about link.ui.com for precise antenna aiming, compensating for RF frequency differences. 📡
• Get tips on how to adjust your antenna using heading and tilt for optimal signal reception. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Discover the difference between visual and RF line of sight with Nater Tater's guidance! 📡
• Learn about new tools like link.ui.com and towermaps.com to improve your signal strength. 🛠️
• Understand how to accurately aim your external antenna with frequency considerations in mind. 📍

Overview

Nater Tater dives into the intricacies of finding optimal line of sight for better internet connection. He makes a clear distinction between visual line of sight (what you can physically see) and radio frequency (RF) line of sight (which is signal-dependent). This video aims to teach viewers how to more effectively identify and use tools to find these lines of sight for cellular internet services, especially for T-Mobile users.

The video introduces viewers to various online tools, like link.ui.com and towermaps.com, that facilitate the process of locating nearby cell towers. Nater Tater explains how to interpret the data these tools provide, such as the tower's height above ground level, the distance from your location, and the terrain's impact on signal reception. These tools are essential for users looking to enhance their home internet connections by ensuring a robust line of sight.

Further into the video, Nater Tater explains the effect of different frequency bands on the RF line of sight and guides viewers on how to adjust antennas accordingly. The provided tips and tactics are designed to help users achieve the best signal quality possible, factoring in the potential obstacles that might disrupt a signal. By the end, viewers learn to use headings and tilt adjustments to properly aim antennas, making the most out of their internet service provider's signal.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview of the Video In the introduction, Nate from the Nader Tater channel discusses previous videos about T-Mobile home internet and cellular internet. He explains the importance of understanding your connection to the internet tower, particularly the concept of line of sight. Nate introduces new sites and tools for determining line of sight, which he claims are better than previously mentioned resources.
• 00:30 - 01:00: New Method for Locating Towers and Tools This chapter introduces a new method for locating towers and tools, focusing on using computer-based techniques. The narrator plans to demonstrate these methods using various online sites, with a primary focus on link.ui.com. The chapter invites viewers to like and subscribe if they find the content helpful.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Detailed walkthrough of Ubiquity Tool (link.ui.com) The chapter provides a detailed exploration of the Ubiquity Tool available at link.ui.com. It discusses Ubiquity's reputation as a manufacturer of a wide range of internet and Wi-Fi devices, including point-to-point connectivity solutions. The author plans to visit a previous work location in Milford, Michigan, as part of demonstrating or utilizing this tool.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Using Tower Maps and Challenges with Cell Mapper This chapter discusses the use of Cell Mapper to find cell towers. It explains that tower locations can be input manually by users or automatically by Cell Mapper through triangulation. These locations may sometimes be inaccurate due to manual input or challenging terrain, which could lead to errors by several hundred feet.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Important Data Points for Tower Location The chapter discusses the use of towermaps.com as a tool for identifying cell tower locations. Although it doesn't contain all the towers, it includes a significant number of them. By using this site in conjunction with resources like cell mapper or the T-Mobile coverage map, users can find the general locations of cell towers they are interested in.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Further Explanation of Visual and RF Line of Sight In this chapter, the focus is on further explaining the concept of Visual and RF Line of Sight. The speaker demonstrates how to locate specific points using Google Maps, which is a useful tool for understanding the geographical positioning and elevation of cell antennas. The demonstration uses a particular spot between the US23 road and the GM Proving Ground to highlight important data points, like the above ground level measurement of 150 feet. This information is crucial for determining the height at which cell antennas are placed.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Understanding Frequency and its Impact on Signal The chapter explores how to use a tool or website (mentioned as link.ui) to assess the location and impact of signal towers. A specific example involves identifying and manipulating points on a map to understand the tower's position relative to other locations, such as a residence, emphasizing the tangible interactions between signal routing and physical geography.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Impact of Frequency on RF Line of Sight The chapter 'Impact of Frequency on RF Line of Sight' seems to involve a practical demonstration or discussion around picking up radio frequency signals. A specific point of reference is selected to illustrate the concept, and there is a mention of metric units being used by default, which could potentially cause confusion.
• 09:00 - 09:30: Aiming Antenna Using Compass and Tilt The chapter titled "Aiming Antenna Using Compass and Tilt" discusses how to adjust and set up an antenna using specific measurements. The speaker talks about switching to imperial units such as miles and feet to better interpret distance, mentioning a specific distance of 4.3 miles "as the crow flies." They also emphasize the importance of adjusting the installation height from a default value (previously 34 feet), to align the direct visual line accurately. These modifications are essential for proper antenna alignment.
• 09:30 - 10:00: Concluding Remarks The chapter discusses the challenges faced when trying to establish a line of sight for Wi-Fi transmission. Initially, the line of sight is indicated as blue, meaning it's clear, but the Fresnel zone is orange, indicating obstruction. As the distance is increased to 150 feet, the line of sight is cleared of all terrain obstructions. However, a new issue arises as the technology being used is designed for Wi-Fi, posing potential compatibility challenges.

✅ New Tools For Locating Your Tower and Signal Line of Sight - External Antenna Aiming Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey everyone this is nate and this is the nader tater channel all right i've done a couple videos in the past about t-mobile home internet or really any uh cellular internet and your tower that you're connected to and how you can find out if you have good line of sight and what line of sight there's a visual line of sight and then there's a rf or a radio line of sight and they're different i'll talk about that but i have a couple new sites and tools that honestly are better than the ones i
• 00:30 - 01:00 showed before so i figured it was worth an update to go through uh these new methods on the computer to show you uh how to do that so let me hop in there and do that and as always thank you for watching always like and subscribe to the channel if it helps you out but let's hop in here and show you some of the new sites and tools okay so i'm going to use a couple sites but the main one is this link link.ui.com
• 01:00 - 01:30 which is actually a ubiquity i guess service or tool that they have out here and they are a maker of lots of um you know wi-fi or internet devices including point-to-point stuff so i'm going to go to my old work site which is in milford michigan and then i'm going to pick a couple places here that
• 01:30 - 02:00 are kind of interesting to look at so what i'm going to do to find out where my tower is and this is something that you can use cell mapper to find your tower but there are some issues with that the tower locations are user inputted and so that can be a manual input which is the green dot that they show on there or it can be a red dot which means that cell mapper did it itself by triangulating the location so really either those could be off or wrong and sometimes depending on your terrain even being off several hundred feet is a
• 02:00 - 02:30 problem so anyways you can go here to the towermaps.com and this has a tool that has uh i want i'm not going to say all of the cell towers but it has a lot of the cell towers and so if you know at least the general location where you need to be looking based off cell mapper or the t-mobile coverage map which kind of gives you a hint of where their towers are at you can go in here and you can see where they are located and registered
• 02:30 - 03:00 you can also do a little bit of searching on google maps to see if you can find them they're hard to find but for this demonstration i'm going to use this dot right here which is uh between this us23 road and this gm proving ground so if i click on it it gives me another important data point and that is above ground level so this 150 feet number is important for how high the cell uh you know antennas actually are
• 03:00 - 03:30 so let's go back to this link.ui site and i can see right here this subdivision which kind of has a very particular shape to it is where this tower is i'm going to click right where i saw it and i'm going to click add point to point and now it creates this you know random other place to the right of it that's what you'll drag and move to your house or wherever you're
• 03:30 - 04:00 trying to pick up the signal now this is not me but i'm going to pick something that i think is kind of an interesting uh point to show you guys and that's just over here and yeah this looks good so i'll i'll use this as a as a point of reference so now what i'll do i guess i forgot to mention on this site by default i think it's the metric units which might throw you off so you
• 04:00 - 04:30 can go here to this little ruler and change it to the imperial units for us for our nonsensical values to get you in miles and feet so you can see i'm 4.3 miles away um as the crow flies but the other thing i have to change is the installation height so that 150 number that we had before now i need to type that in and what you'll see if you notice what happened was before it was 34 feet you can see that the direct visual line
• 04:30 - 05:00 of sight is blue which means it's good it has line of sight but then the frenal zone is orange which means it's obstructed which is it means it doesn't have radial or radial line of sight but if i go to 150 feet now all of a sudden you can see okay good now i'm clear of all the terrain and we have good line of sight but there's another problem here that's the fact that we're trying to use this which is designed for uh wi-fi and we're trying to get
• 05:00 - 05:30 cellular information and the the difference there is the free no zone changes based off the frequency of the signal so that's where i have to go to my third location which is the frequency indication for all these different bands so if you know what band you're on which that's a whole other thing you have to look in your t-mobile app or go on to the t-mobile web interface to get it i have other
• 05:30 - 06:00 videos on how to do that but once you find the band you're on then let's say you're on the good bands which would be n41 for the 5g which is at 2.5 gigahertz and then maybe you're on band 2 or band 4 or band 66 for your primary 4g well you can look at here and you can see most of these 4g ones they're around 2000 you know give or take and that 2000 megahertz is really it's the same thing as 2 gigahertz so
• 06:00 - 06:30 in some sense we're really kind of around this two to 2.5 gigahertz for our our channels but you might be on the band um 71 which is down at 600 megahertz or band 12 which is 700 megahertz so that's what we need to consider when we go back to here and we click on the device that is projecting our signal strength for we do this drop down and now you can see you have a couple different drop down items and just to show you the difference look
• 06:30 - 07:00 at down here at the frino zone of how skinny it is and if i switch it down to this 900 megahertz zone and just pick you know either one of these you can see how much larger that renal zone got so the lower the frequency the bigger the phenol zone which means the more clearance you need of your visual line of sight to all the obstruction around it now maybe it's obvious but i'll say it anyways this does not take into account trees or buildings so if there's
• 07:00 - 07:30 something big obstacle there in between you then this doesn't take that into account it's just the um the terrain there so you can see at 900 megahertz i don't have the full um uh renal band accounted for it looks like i have the first order one taken care of um and so that means if you're down at the like 600 megahertz for this b71 or n71
• 07:30 - 08:00 uh frequency you are not going to have as clean of an rf line of sight as one of the n41s or the other bands so this is how i'm i'm using it so it's not perfect it's 900 megahertz not 600 megahertz and this 2.4 gigahertz is obviously not exactly um you know 1700 or 1900 or 2100 megahertz but it's pretty close to the 2.5 gigahertz that is the n41 so now i click
• 08:00 - 08:30 on that and i can see lo and behold i have perfect rf line of sight between these two points for this stuff and then the other information the signal quality that kind of stuff and even the channel width that doesn't matter uh for you at all but the other really nice thing this does have that i do pay attention to is over here on the right side which is illustrating my my house in this case and it gives me a heading
• 08:30 - 09:00 and a tilt so this would come in real handy for aiming your antenna if you're at your house you can use a compass you know your phones often have a compass on them as well as a tilt angle to help define how to orient and point that according to this now i'll say that that might not always be the perfect angle but that certainly is a very good starting point that's where i would start but depending on what other kind of interferences you might have you might actually get better if you're
• 09:00 - 09:30 slightly off of that so that is how you can use this tool to really get the best idea of the visual and rf line of sight so i do think some of my viewers for pointing this out for me and if you guys have any other comments or questions put them in the section below on youtube comments and i will try to get to them and answer them so thanks for watching