Direct mount antenna bad idea?

kersing
Sat, 31 Jan 2026 19:37:46 +0000

Any decent antenna available with gateways that allow pole mounting will be a dipole antenna. These create a virtual ground plane between the upper and lower pole and do not require an actual ground plane (which would be hard to come by on when mounting on a pole).

Not knowing the exact model of the new antenna you obtained it is hard to determine if it’s a dipole or monopole but probably it is a dipole. Mounting a dipole on top of a metal box shouldn’t be an issue if the box isn’t a couple of feet square. Antennas meant for car use will require a ground plane to be present and in that case the gateway will be too small.

In the 11 years I’m working with LoRaWAN I never found a third party antenna that improved upon the (decent) antennas available from the gateway vendor. Yes, there have been some gateways with token antennas, mostly indoor gateways, however these are easily recognizable as being sub standard (a 5 cm antenna included with a gateway is not the same quality as the 50 dollar one offered by the same vendor but it allows getting started without damaging the gateway)