So what does any hardcore Air-Stream member do when they get their hands on some hardware?
They look for ways to mod it of course!
The SXT comes with an internally mounted 16dBi panel antena array. It is Dual Polarity and is designed to fit into the neat enclosure.
In testing we have found the hardware is plenty capable of 100mbit full duplex, but its only let down is the low gain antenna, as it has a 25 degree beam width!
So naturally we poked around the PCB and what did we find??
What looked exactly like MMCX mounting holes, with a custom 3 pin joiner to connect the panel antenna!
This of course means we jump on ebay and grab ourselves some MMCX sockets! 🙂
While we wait for those to arrive, its desoldering time!
First the there is a layer of plastic with foil squares which look like concentrators, this simply unclips
Then the antenna must be desoldered and unclipped.
Now we can have a closer look at the holes in the PCB for the MMCX connectors to go into..
And lastly, simply drill the holes out with a 0.6mm PCB drill bit to clean the hole up and pop the new MMCX connectors in!
This is the finished product
Now we have a finished modification, all thats left to do is see how it fits into a box.
Note: I only had a single pigtail box spare for these photos, you would not fire this board up without both pigtails connected and two antennas connected.
And there we have it, a good fit!
We are hoping to test this on a RocketDish 30 between ModburyNorth and Athelstone, once it stops raining! So we will know how well they do with a real antenna connected.