Ubiquiti NanoStation WiFi link

DaveJohnson

I am on the 14th floor in a 25 story high rise building. Current setup is a Kenwood TS-480 front panel through a RemoteRig box into a Linksys router. The link to the roof is established with a Ubiquiti wireless point to point Wifi unit (NanoStation M5) on the balcony and an identical unit is peaking over the edge of the roof about 150' apart. The rooftop Ubiquiti unit is then connected to the rooftop RemoteRig box and the radio with a 100' CAT-6 cable. This works perfectly. I also have a SteppIR vertical controlled via this link. The RemoteRig boxes will still be used for the SteppIR control.

Any issues anticipated installing FlexRadio through this network? I understand the issue thanks to Michael VA3MW - Layer 2 data and the VITA 49 broadcast messages need to be seen by the Ubiquiti hardware.

Assuming this all works, I am anticipating that upgrading to the Flex radio will be a big improvement. I hope to improve the noise handling and overall performance significantly with a Flex-6400 and Maestro control head. Question - as a casual DXer and contester will I be OK with the 6400 or is the 6600 so much better at 2X the price?
Thanks for your help.
Dave VE7VR

KD0RC

Hi Dave, the question is what do you need? The 6600 has additional bandpass filtering on the contest bands, an additional SCU and higher sampling rate. If you want to run SO2R, the 6600 is the way to go with the additional SCU. If you will be close to another high power transmitter on a harmonically related band, the 7th order elliptical filters of the 6600 will help. If you plan on running two transverters for satellite work, you want the 6600. If none of these items apply, the 6400 should do the trick.

There may be other reasons for choosing the 6600 over the 6400 that I have not thought of...

73,

Len, KD0RC

DaveJohnson

Thanks Len. I think the 6400 would suffice for me. The 6600 would also probably be better in a multi-operator contest station plus the other things you mentioned. Looks like my network set up will allow the Flex radio to communicate with the Maestro end to end so that is good.

73,
Dave VE7VR

KD0RC

I bought my 6400 in February of this year and I have really been enjoying it. Sometimes I wish I had the 6600 so that I could listen to two bands on two different antennas at the same time. Realistically, that is not very often... I have not regretted my purchase at all!

73 and best of luck with whatever decision you make.

Len