For those of you that are a “one man show” like myself, you will often find that you need to be on the tower and align an antenna at the same time. This generally requires you to log into the antenna while still on the tower…which can be difficult if your antenna is PoE(power over ethernet). What I did was whip up a little contraption to solve this conundrum.
As you can see there is a simple clam shell RJ-45 enclosure that holds 3 RJ-45 keystones. I like to use a different color for each to help remember what is what.
The far left 45 is where you plug in your POE coming up the tower. Only the power wires are used from here. Run the blues and brows over to the center 45.
The far right 45 is where you plug in your laptop. You are using the 4 ethernet wires from this port. Connect the greens and oranges from this jack to the center 45.
The center 45 goes to the radio. You are sending the power from the POE and the ethernet from your laptop.
If you source the parts from deepsurplus.com, you can get everything to your doorstep for less than $10…which is a price I like! If you don’t have time to build your own, I’ll gladly sell you one for $100 and offer free shipping!
Now you can hang off of a tower with your netbook and align your radios all by your lonesome 🙂
Leave a Reply