Max BR1 Mini - Sprint Bands - Winter Vs Summer

I connect to sprint, and have both B41 (2500) and B25 (1900) available.

I am about 1 mile from the sprint tower, but it is heavily treed, with a couple of hills in there.
The sprint tower is not super tall as well, it is a smaller tower.

In the winter B41 is great, 40 down and 8 up.

But in the summer when the leaves come in B41 drops to about 15 down, which is still fine but the upload is about 1.3 and takes a second to get going which makes browsing and vpn slow.

I can switch to B25 and get stable 8 down 8 up,
Here is a typical B25 signal:
RSSI -70
SINR 4.2
RSRP -91
RSRQ -10

Here is a typical summer B41
image

In the Winter the Primary band is about the same except the RSRP is ~ -106, the SINR bounces around from 10 to 25 db range
The secondary is pretty much the same as the primary.

I have an amp for B25, but that doesn’t really need to be boosted, and doesn’t help, and there are no amps for B41 (That I know of).

My Mini is outside on the corner of my property in plastic enclosure on a pole.

Is there a way to download on B41 and upload on B25 (I am assuming not).

Or is there a good way to get the upload speeds up on B41? Is one of the antenna ports receive and one transmit or?

I do have two atennas available to work with. A omnidirection wilson RV / Trucker antenna and a Directional wislon yagi antenna

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Hi,

This is very interesting out of curiosity what city and state are you located in?

We do not see this in our HQ as we don’t have seasons here. :slight_smile:

Thank You,

I am in Howell, Michigan.

I have found that the front corner of my property gets the best B41, anywhere else is much weaker, if you go down the road the signal gets stronger, but the road elevation starts to increase and I think the path through the trees is a little thinner.

I am not sure if the signal is getting the benefit of the path of the road in the corner or what. :slight_smile:

The cell tower is not a very tall one, it is It is 152 feet tall.

Maybe I can suggest a couple of things to think about.

Antennas on BR1: So far as I know (and I’ll be pleased to be corrected on this), the Mini transmits using only one antenna. The 2nd one is used for diversity receive/MIMO. If you use a directional antenna you may essentially limit yourself to the use of a single site. That’s risky. Suppose, for example, that site loses its back-haul. You’re OTS. This risk is exacerbated because Sprint uses only a single site for CA.

About the amp: Forget it.

As to using one band for forward path and the other for reverse – forget that also. Those are parameters which are not under user control.

Regarding the propagation you have experienced: Yup. Nice work observing that. That’s the effect of signal attenuation by the leaves on the trees. The higher the frequency the greater the attenuation. Essentially no attenuation at HF frequencies but a real factor to be considered @ cellular freqs. Thus, typically better performance in winter than summer.

There are antennas available that would likely do what you need to do, but the best ones are not the ones you referenced. PM me if you want to discuss further.

Rick

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Thank you for the information.
I have had a sprint cell card for several years now, before that I was using a local WISP, which started out in 900 mhz and worked ok year round, but just had a top speed of about 1 - 2 meg. They switch to a 3.3 ghz system and that worked great the first winter. Then the leaves came in and my ping plotter would show long (couple min) drops in connection to the tower, then would come back for a bit then gone again.

So left the WISP for Sprint. Which when it is in B25 is totally usable (8-10 down 8 up). But you just get spoiled over the winter with 40+ down 5 up.

Before I had the mini I had a cradlepoint mbr95, and a Franklin usb modem.

Oh man what a difference switching to the mini… Speeds with from 10 ish down to 40 down in B41 (Added CA).
B25 is much stronger too. Also I really don’t think the Cradlepoint liked being outside, it was starting to act up on me, thus searching out the replacement and going to the mini.

I use Sprint service at hundreds of locations across the US and deal with different issues with each of their bands. There isn’t an amp that I know of that supports band 41. Using directional antennas like Wilson, etc also presents issues. I’d use a pair of 12dbi outdoor rated omnidirectional antennas. I have had great success with them both indoors and out. I can help you obtain them if you’re interested. They are about $100 each.

Hello @Jay_Gillett,
There is a specific and specialist amount involved in correctly choosing an antenna system that will deliver the most suitable outcomes for your application.

Most wireless (be that cellular/mobile or Wi-Fi) antenna system for MIMO work best with an out of phase antenna array (+/- 45 Degrees of the vertical), meaning you can have a very tightly packed antenna with exceptional performance. The cabling system needs to be 50Ohm impedance (not 75Ohm as used for Terrestrial TV & most MATV systems). The quality of the cable system can make just as significant impact as the quality of the antenna; we run over 50-meter cable runs for some of our clients and get excellent results as we supply a professionally designed fit for purpose solution.

We suggest that you contact your local Authorised Peplink Partner for specialised assistance.

Your local Certified Peplink Partner can help you with a copy of the Antenna Selection Guide for Peplink Partners, this is a detailed guide and is only available to the Peplink Partners so to ensure that you get helped in working through it to get the most suitable antenna solution to your application.

Remember that the majority of these systems are MIMO (Multi-In, Multi-Out), so you must ensure you use antennas and cabling suitably designed for the application.
Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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