22/11/2022, 09:15 PM
The EP06-E arrived, taking exactly 3 weeks from the date of ordering on AliExpress. Installing it however was more tedious than I anticipated, but at least it works. 
The outside cover of the LHG is clipped on, requiring a blunt flat metal object (e.g. butter knife) to release the clips. While the PCIe board is easy to access without anything in the way, there's a catch - They covered the U.fl antenna connections in hot melt glue.
I removed the PCB which requires a T9 Torx screwdriver and slowly melted the glue using a mini heat gun from a distance and holding an old credit card over the modem/circuitry to protect from the heat. This took about 30 minutes as I removed the softened glue bit by bit to avoid damaging the U.fl leads. Finally, it was just a matter of removing the two screws holding the modem in place and swapping the PCIe boards.
Upon first boot up, I got a little concerned with the modem not showing up, but with it running an old router OS v7.1, I manually updated it and the modem appeared and connected straight away after the update. For testing, I used a Three prepay phone SIM, the same network as my main broadband SIM
I mounted the LHG on a camera tripod and placed it outside the house facing the same direction as the Iskra P-58's mounted on the gable. This was just for a quick test run I did in the morning as I will do further testing when I get a chance on a dry calm day. It's typically wet and windy here, being near the Atlantic coast.
One thing's for sure, it's a big improvement over the R11e-LTE at least based on my brief testing, unless the R11e-LTE was faulty. The RSRP readings are appear to be 3dB to 4dB more than the R11e-LTE both on the lower and upper bands. Compared to the Iskra P-58's + 7.5m leads (mounted on the gable), the LHG manages to beat it by around 10dBi on band 1, whereas the Iskra's are around 6dB stronger on band 20. I will do further testing another day when I get a chance to test the LHG high up temporarily to do a like for like comparison.
As mentioned earlier, I can only connect to band 20 as the primary band due to the >50km mast distance across Donegal Bay, so the only way I can test bands 1 and 3 is with carrier aggregation, i.e. with cell monitor, which lacks the SINR read-out for aggregated bands.
LHG with EP06-E:
Chateau 5G with Iskra P-58 + 7.5m leads:
Speed tests on the LHG - Bands 20+1 CA, Bands 20+3 CA and Band 20 on its own:
For 3CA , this calculates (removing the second band 20 count) as 73 + 81 - 9 = ~145Mbps.
3CA (same EARFCNs) speed test on the Chateau 5G with Iskra P-58:
The download speeds certainly look promising with the LHG. The upload speed however is much lower than what I would like to consider getting the LHGG LTE18.
When I get a chance on a dry calm day, I will try some further tests including on the Eir network that uses band 28 in my area.
The outside cover of the LHG is clipped on, requiring a blunt flat metal object (e.g. butter knife) to release the clips. While the PCIe board is easy to access without anything in the way, there's a catch - They covered the U.fl antenna connections in hot melt glue.
I removed the PCB which requires a T9 Torx screwdriver and slowly melted the glue using a mini heat gun from a distance and holding an old credit card over the modem/circuitry to protect from the heat. This took about 30 minutes as I removed the softened glue bit by bit to avoid damaging the U.fl leads. Finally, it was just a matter of removing the two screws holding the modem in place and swapping the PCIe boards.
Upon first boot up, I got a little concerned with the modem not showing up, but with it running an old router OS v7.1, I manually updated it and the modem appeared and connected straight away after the update. For testing, I used a Three prepay phone SIM, the same network as my main broadband SIM
I mounted the LHG on a camera tripod and placed it outside the house facing the same direction as the Iskra P-58's mounted on the gable. This was just for a quick test run I did in the morning as I will do further testing when I get a chance on a dry calm day. It's typically wet and windy here, being near the Atlantic coast.
One thing's for sure, it's a big improvement over the R11e-LTE at least based on my brief testing, unless the R11e-LTE was faulty. The RSRP readings are appear to be 3dB to 4dB more than the R11e-LTE both on the lower and upper bands. Compared to the Iskra P-58's + 7.5m leads (mounted on the gable), the LHG manages to beat it by around 10dBi on band 1, whereas the Iskra's are around 6dB stronger on band 20. I will do further testing another day when I get a chance to test the LHG high up temporarily to do a like for like comparison.
As mentioned earlier, I can only connect to band 20 as the primary band due to the >50km mast distance across Donegal Bay, so the only way I can test bands 1 and 3 is with carrier aggregation, i.e. with cell monitor, which lacks the SINR read-out for aggregated bands.
LHG with EP06-E:
Chateau 5G with Iskra P-58 + 7.5m leads:
Speed tests on the LHG - Bands 20+1 CA, Bands 20+3 CA and Band 20 on its own:
For 3CA , this calculates (removing the second band 20 count) as 73 + 81 - 9 = ~145Mbps.
3CA (same EARFCNs) speed test on the Chateau 5G with Iskra P-58:
The download speeds certainly look promising with the LHG. The upload speed however is much lower than what I would like to consider getting the LHGG LTE18.
When I get a chance on a dry calm day, I will try some further tests including on the Eir network that uses band 28 in my area.