Continuing the discussion from LoRa APRS Tracker (Part 6) - #102 by MM0FMF.
Previous discussions:
@G3CWI my LoRa tracker might not make it to the party tomorrow. The antenna mount has come off the main board 
Current thinking its to replace the SMA connector with a short length of cable and mount a BNC panel mount to the 3D printed case I have…
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That happened to my T-beam board. The connector is only soldered on the front two legs. The rear ones are chopped short and unsoldered to avoid the 18650 cell holder.
I used a dremel to hollow out the battery holder on the reverse side and then soldered in a new connector using all five solder pads.
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That happened to me a lot. I replaced the SMA connector so many times the copper eventually came away from the FR4. I believe there is a version which has a IPEX connector on the PCB which allows the antenna to be mounted in a far more sensible location.
Dave
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Cheers Fraser. I don’t have another connector at the mo.
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Is the IPEX connector the same as the GPS connector? Little circular mount with a middle pin?
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Yes
You can then go for something like this
https://3dchicken.co.uk/products/t-beam-supreme-case-enclosure-for-meshtastic
Dave
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And a great enclosure it is!
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Yes, I bought a TBeam with the antenna on an IPEX connector specifically to mount it like Rick has, but I didn’t pay attention enough on AliExpress and ended up with one without the OLED and had to buy that separately… And my soldering is awful, so much so that the screen doesn’t light up. Need to have another go!
I was thinking about adding this sort of thing to Richard’s wiki…
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Please do feel free to add tips to the wiki. They will get lost here.
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Make sure you get the right 0.96 OLED, there are two versions. The pins are either
VCC GND SCL SDA
or
GND VCC SCL SDA
Obviously if GND and VCC are swapped, it isn’t going to work. The other two pins (SCL and SDA) are the i2c bus clock and data. They are the same way round on all versions.
Looking at my T-beam, the “VCC GND SCL SDA” is the correct version:
Dave
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I will be recovering the Great Dun Fell test installation this morning. It proved to be a very useful test; highlighting several technical challenges we will need to overcome. John G3WGV is on the case so I’m confident that we will end up with a good solution.
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I have a version 1 T-Beam that came with no display but had an IPEX connector.
After it had sat on the shelf for a year, I was just about to deploy it as a Digipeater yesterday when I realised there is something wrong with the transmit output power.
Just putting another one together flashed onto a LilyGo ESP32. 
P.S after carrying on reading the thread, yes I got the wrong display and had to do a mod 
Paul
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As Richard/G3CWI mentioned, I am actively working on getting a permanent LoRa digipeater on Great Dun Fell. It is line-of-sight to my G3WGV-3 iGate and the coverage ought to be really good, including the M6 corridor from Kendal to Carlisle, most of the Lake District summits and west Cumbria in general. Maybe even into south-west Scotland.
The site hosts the GB3VE repeater on 433.1MHz and there are other services up there too, so the RF environment is quite polluted. The digipeater front end is barn door wide, so more or less anything will flatten it. I am therefore looking into building a 5 element interdigital filter, which theoretically should limit the -3dB bandwidth to 2MHz and put GB3VE some 80dB down the southern slope. Hopefully that’ll be enough!
I am really an HF CW guy, so UHF filters are well outside my area of expertise. If anyone is able to assist with the design and ideas for manufacture I would be grateful.
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I found the problem it was a faulty SMA connector, or probably more accurate, I managed to break it.
Now fixed with an SMA pigtail soldered directly to the board in place of the IPEX
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Thanks Dave.
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@G3CWI I did manage to take LoRa out on a Motorsport adventure up the M62.
The tracking was not great. I cut and mounted a whip on an external mag-mount on the roof rack to aid transmissions.
I was hoping for a few more pings up the M62.
Cheers
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That’s really poor. Most people are seeing good coverage in that area. Antenna fault?
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Possibly, the SMA connector did snap off and I soldered some RG174 coax to the board to get an antenna connection.
I would have expected more pings up through Liverpoool/M62 corridor.
However I was picked up by G3SMT-10 from the position circled.
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