Resellers Make stand-offs available?

[David L. Vrablic]

Would it be possible for the resellers to make the standoffs available.
I know it is a pain to fumble with small quantities.
I suggest 100 piece paks or more to make it worthwhile.
I'll bet Lonnie gets them by the "Gugillions"

[tog]

I, too, would appreciate having a supply of standoffs. I don't like jury-rigging the mounting of the WAR boards.

[tony]

The standoffs are available on our store (100 packs) on www.star-os.com (http://www.star-os.com). I'm sure some of the resellers would be willing to sell them as well, if they are not already listed on their store.

[dekka]

We'll add them to our store shortly.

[Stratolinks]

I do not trust any of those self adhesive standoffs. I purchased threaded standoffs from Digi-Key. M3 thread 15mm long, a bag of M3 nuts, lockwashers and a bag of 6mm long M3 bolts to thread into them. Drill the panel, put the standoff through the hole and place a lockwasher and nut on it and tighten it up, repeat 3 more times. After that, place WAR board over standoffs and put 4 M3 bolts into the standoffs and the WAR is nicely secured. For a WAR4, double up the standoffs so you can reach behind the board for the back cards. Makes for a good ground to the case as well.

Of course all this assumes a metal radio cabinet with a mounting panel, which will not apply when you are talking about installing these inside panel antenna enclosures.

[therealboss]

Stratolinks (http://forums.star-os.com/member.php?u=2154)

I do it the same way, like the fact it gives the board a good ground and I think that the metal box acts like a "Faraday Cage"

[Beebe]

I'm no grounding expert, but it seems like that would give a good path to ground through your war board and down your ethernet cable should the tower get hit.

I like to isolate my WAR boards from the tower so that if the tower gets hit, the only current the WAR sees from it is what happens to get inducted through the sheilded cat5 - unless it arcs to the war board.

Thanks,
Roger

[kbldawg]

I think there's a difference in how you should do it between APs and CPEs.

For APs i've done it both ways, neither method seemed to have made the difference between survival and failure, however...I settled on grounding the board simply because research told me every component should be grounded.

I don't believe grounding the board is going to provide the least path of resistance to ground; that's the key. As long as you have provided the best "least path of resistance", via your grounding system, you'll be fine.

For CPEs i've had many a power surge on the ethernet that has contributed (IMHO) to many TR-CPE200 failures simply because the pcb was not grounded to the enlcosure, which was grounded to a good earth ground.

I would prefer to see metal stand-offs on the WARTENNAs.

That is my understanding of it all, for what it's worth.

[Stratolinks]

The general idea here is that the board is grounded to the case. Every line coming into the case is grounded at the point of entry. The case is then grounded to the tower.

Since Febraury 2002 when I started this business, we have lost 3 antennas from direct lightning strikes, 1 WRAP board from a power line surge through an unprotected Ethernet connection, and 3 radio cards that acted incorrectly. We have never lost any electronic gear that was properly protected and grounded.

In the early days we did lose several amplifiers, but we never were able to point the finger at lightning because they all failed when there wasn't any. Now there are no amplifiers (good riddance).

[rbolduc]

The only thing I would worry about is that the adhesive would not break down under heat.. Other than that I would love to use plastic standoffs and use a ground wire for the board..


Reed

[go.fast]

From my experience, it's not so much the heat, but rather the cold that has made my plactic standoffs fail.
And I had too much weight on them.
If your worried, you can ad some adhiesive around the bottom of the stand off to give it some additional stregnth.
These small boards are not generally a problem.

George

[Stratolinks]

From my experience, it's not so much the heat, but rather the cold that has made my plactic standoffs fail.George

I have seen these things fail in the cold when there is nothing attached to them. They end up sitting on the bottom of the case. I have never had a metal standoff fall off.

[lonnie]

Are you saying that OUR standoffs fall off in the cold? Or are you saying that you have seen plastic adhesive backed standoffs fall off?

[Stratolinks]

I have seen Panduit brand standoffs come off as well as some unknown brand that were labelled with 3M permanent adhesive mouting tape, and several other generic ones. I have never purchased standoffs myself, other than the Panduit ones, the others just came with stuff.

If you are going to use self adhesive standoffs, make sure they are put on when it is warm and use alcohol pads to clean the surface first. Persoanlly I'd still prefer the threaded ones.

[lonnie]

Glad to have this verified that you were not talking about our standoffs. The standoffs we use have so far been holding up well. We have had -36C and nothing has gone wrong.

[David L. Vrablic]

Now for a real "Belt and suspenders "approach.
1. Clean the metal mounting plate.
2. Once stuck down use a drop of crazy glue on each pad (where it makes contact with the plate)
3. Put a dab of silicone adhesive bridging the pad and the metal on each one.
4. With WRAPS in a roo pick up one of the pem-nut standoffs and bolt the corner of the WRAP right to the threaded stud. (It also grounds the board.)

Think that ought to solve the fears ?

It's 30 below with 40 mph winds gust and nothing has come apart yet.
Thanks for going the extra mile Lonnie and making the pads available.

[rbolduc]

Glad to have this verified that you were not talking about our standoffs. The standoffs we use have so far been holding up well. We have had -36C and nothing has gone wrong.

Goes to show if you get the right stuff the first time it just works :)

Reed

P.S. We have snow for sale here in Maine if anybody is interested, good for skiing, snowmobiling, taking up extra space in parking lots. ;)

[lonnie]

I'll pass on the snow. We are in the mountains and they call this snowmobile country for a very good reason.

[David L. Vrablic]

Maybe we can work a trade if you got the good kind!
Ours is feather light and blows all over the place.

I just got off the phone with one of my site owners.
He reports that they had 42 inches in the last two days.
We just had a scant 26 here in town.
I had to shovel all day to get my truck out of the driveway yesterday.

This reminds me of the "Good old days" (The late 50's) when we had to walk through the snow "uphill both ways" to go to school! ;-)

[rbolduc]

Maybe we can work a trade if you got the good kind!
Ours is feather light and blows all over the place.

I just got off the phone with one of my site owners.
He reports that they had 42 inches in the last two days.
We just had a scant 26 here in town.
I had to shovel all day to get my truck out of the driveway yesterday.

This reminds me of the "Good old days" (The late 50's) when we had to walk through the snow "uphill both ways" to go to school! ;-)

Yea we got that too with the 40mph winds makes it fun for snowblowing (no pun intended) this is the first storm in 3 years that was more than 6 inches total.. The clubs around here did an excellent job grooming the 8 total inches we had up until yesterday, I think the final tally was somewhere around 20 inches...I really cant wait until spring I am getting motorcycle fever ;)

Reed