I am preparing to use mesh nodes to support communications at an event held in a remote location in Utah's west desert. The nodes will be several miles apart, so high gain antennas will be a necessity. Has anyone figured out a good, inexpensive, portable way to mount antennas and nodes? I have experimented with mounting an antenna and node near the end of an 8' piece of 1 1/4" PVC pipe. This works reasonably well, but I'm concerned that it will be difficult to secure the guy lines needed to hold it up in the very sandy soil out in the desert. It would work better if I didn't have the weight of the router at the top of the pipe along with the antenna, but otherwise I have to use a longer feed line and deal with the losses that introduces. I'd be interested in solutions any of you have come up with, or even hearing about things you have tried that didn't work so I can learn from your experience.

Thanks,

Brad / N7EGO

One important consideration is that the high gain antennas have narrow angles in the signal patterns.   2.4 GHz antennas even more so than VHF or lower frequencies.

Depending on how it's mounted, you may have problems with torsional vibrations.  i.e. the antenna turns in a right left pattern in the wind.  It sometimes helps to have some separate guys on the end of the antenna itself in a V pattern in order to keep it from twisting in the wind.