Customer Reviews

Hawking HiGain Directional Corner Antenna, indoor, 15dBi - HAI15SC

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This is a "deconstructive" review of Hawking's corner reflector. Basically I took it apart so you don't have to! BTW - I am an RF engineer, so I apologize if it gets too technical.

First let me provide a explanation of what a "corner reflector antenna" is. A corner reflector antenna is a very simple, but high gain type of antenna. It consists of a dipole antenna (a dipole is just a straight piece of wire cut in a precise way) and behind the dipole is an angled metal screen or plate which is called the reflector. The angle of the reflector is typically 90 degrees, which forms a corner and thus the name. The reflector focuses the signal so it is more concentrated, which results in higher gain versus a simple dipole.

Taking apart the corner reflector is straightforward, but it does take some time and muscle. I carefully but forcefully pulled on the gray plastic end caps. After some time, the end caps finally came off. This revealed an unlabeled, rather ordinary black "stick" antenna inside the white plastic pipe. It's probably a 5dBi collinear dipole. The antenna is connected to the coax cable via a panel mount SMA connector. I was able to remove this antenna, but it does take some torque because Hawking applied thread locking glue.

Based on it's construction, I have no reason to doubt the 15dbi gain claim. However, I seriously doubt the 90 degree vertical and horizontal beamwidths that the manual seems to claim. I guesstimate that 3dB beamwidths are in the order of 40 degrees horizontal and 30 degrees vertical, based on my experience with similar corner reflectors. This makes orientation MUCH more critical. If you are 15-20 degrees off, you could be losing half (3dB) of your signal! On the other hand, such a narrow beamwidth is a good thing if other people's AP's/client's are interfering. Any other transmitters outside of the main beam will be weakened, reducing your noise and improving signal quality.

Now to analyze the coax cable. The outer jacket is unlabeled white plastic, so you can't tell who made it or what type of cable it is. It's thin, about 1/8" thick . I cut off one end to see what's inside. The shielding is quite good. It's a dual shield, foil plus braid. The foil provides complete coverage. The braid is tin plated copper and has excellent coverage, probably 95%. The center conductor looks and cuts like pure solid copper, not copper clad steel. The center insulator (the dielectric) is a clear translucent, solid (not foam) plastic. When I soldered on an SMA pin, the dielectric easily melted! It's probably NOT teflon, but cheaper, higher loss polyethylene. Based on this, it's probably a RG-174 type cable, not the lower loss RG-316. Cables of this type generally have a loss of 0.6dB per foot at 2.4Ghz. The cable is 6 feet long , so you lose more than half (3.6dB) of your signal in the coax! Making a shorter cable and/or using better cable would help.

Considering how it's made, a lot of the negative reviews make sense. It's a 15dBi antenna, but you lose 3.6dBi in the cable so effectively it's only 11.4dBi. Plus if you don't point it within 15 to 20 degrees of your target (both horizontally AND vertically), you will lose even more signal. Used indoors, there is so much RF scatter that the actual direction of maximum signal can very often NOT be in the direction of the target due to signals being bounced around. You'll have to rotate the antenna in different directions vertically and horizontally to find the maximum signal. Used outdoors or in unobstructed area, just point it at the target and you're done. However, keep in mind that this IS NOT a weatherproof antenna, so don't leave out outside where the rain and sun will beat down on it.

Used properly, this antenna really shines. It provides a tremendous value for under $50. Antennas with similar gain will cost MUCH more.

I have no idea what the person writing the review above was talking about. I had exactly the opposite experience with both products. I put the HAI15SC on a D-Link DI-624 802.11 G/B wireless router and saw a huge improvement !! I'm using three Apple Powerbooks with airport cards - the D-link is a great wireless router but the signal was pretty weak in our house (lot of walls). Put the HAI15SC in and the signal strength increased significantly in the entire house. Rooms that had not signal were now able to get small signal. Highly recommended ! Friends who bought this also experienced a benefit. On the other hand I did buy the D Link DWL G800AP repeater - went through 2 of them in fact - and neither of them worked. I returned them both after weeks of trying to get them to work and some 16 calls to D Link tech support. D Link tech support finally admitted that they were not sure why they did not work - it was a new product and maybe had problems. Take a pass on the D Link repeater and try the antenna - its a lot cheaper. The D Link repeaters do NOT work - they drop signal. Trust me - I tried have set up several networks. Been through three wireless routers, three antennas (I'm big on buying, trying, returning if it does not perform.) The HAI15SC works very well.

Pay no attention to the negative reviews of this product. RF links are all about math and the gain of this antenna produces a directed signal that is hundreds of times stronger that what you get out of one of those standard wifi omni antennas. The people frowning on it are likely trying to use a radio link in an environment where rf is just not feasible.

For the record, it improved the signal strength on my point to point from around 35% to around 90%.

I bought this antenna and got a drastic increase in signal strength & range, but I still initially had issues despite the high signal strength. The trick is, now that you've boosted the router strength, you may need to boost the strength of the client device, in my case, a laptop. In the wireless card driver configuration/properties on my laptop I had to change the settings so the broadcast strength was optimized for range & not power savings to take advantage of the increased range of the signal from my router. Just because you added an extra 20 - 50 ft of broadcast range to your router, doesn't mean client devices have the strength to send all the way back.

My house floorplan is extremely spunky. That also means that setting up my WiFi network was going to be extremely difficult.

Up until the point that I bought this antenna, I spent a total of $400 trying to get all my signal strength bars up to max, but rather, ended up getting mediocre connectivity, with occasional connection drops.

After installing the antenna, I get perfect signal, without the use of any repeaters in between. Hawkings is truly the best IMHO, especially when the quality of home/office networking gear is going to sh**. I just hope that the frequencies don't cause any long term health effects :)

I set up this antenna to connect two buildings together. For a strsight shot with clear line of sight I have max connection, even in weather. Distance 200 yards. In my home I receive and boost the signal with a dlink repeater.

i have been using this antenna with a alfa adapter with the Realtek 8187 chipset, the combination is the most powerful in the market, you not only have good reception but also enough power to get back to the sender of the signal. Most of the people don`t realize that sometimes with a good antenna like this one you do have a good reception but can`t reach back the sender of the signal do to weak power signal from your equipment, you do have to amplify this signal in order to reach the sender and i recommend strongly for that matter the new wireless adapter with 500 or 1000 mw, i do live in a rural area and me and the neighbors using this combination have been able to reach the router of a school almost 3 miles away at 54mgs on the g band. I higly recommend using both for a perfect internet experience.

My extended family shares broadband over 3 houses using bridges/routers. The most distant (<750') had a poor/slow link until I installed this antenna. Speedtest became comparable to hardwired. This product is directional and only appropriate for point to point applications.

One thing that I did not see mentioned anywhere regarding this product is whether the connector is SMA or TNC.

The antenna comes with about 6 feet of thin antenna cable pre-attached to it. The cable has a native SMA connector on it, BUT an SMA-->TNC adapter is included in the box! I purchased one of these separately and if someone had just written the review I am writing, I could have saved 2 dollars.

Thanks Mr. Ulanday for your reverse-engineering. I agree with your assessment of this antenna. My experience: I was trying to get a good signal over a 250 ft span between buildings. I had a clear shot window-to-window and used a Belkin F5D7230 range extender with this antenna. While the antenna as shipped did improve the signal it was still too weak for a reasonable link. The throughput was well under 1Mb/s. I then cut the coax cable down to about 16 inches and my data rate jumped up to a reliable 3-5Mb/s, a respectible rate for 250 ft distance. For those interested in modifying the cable you will need a reverse polarity SMA connector (J908-ND from digikey.com) and some good technician skills.