# Choosing a Repeater Location

Placement determines performance. A well-placed repeater with modest hardware will consistently outperform a poorly placed repeater with expensive equipment.

## The primacy of line-of-sight

LoRa signals travel best when there is a clear, unobstructed path between transmitter and receiver. Any obstruction - a building, a ridge, a dense stand of trees - attenuates the signal. The higher your repeater, the more of the surrounding terrain is in line-of-sight.

## Location types

### Hilltops and ridgelines

The best possible placement. A repeater on a hilltop with 360-degree unobstructed views can serve an area many times larger than the same hardware at ground level. As a rule of thumb, even modest height gains above the surrounding obstructions can noticeably improve coverage; how much depends on the local terrain. The underlying mechanism is the radio horizon, which grows with the square root of antenna height - roughly 3.57×√h<sub>m</sub> km (or about 1.23×√h<sub>ft</sub> miles) - so the first few tens of feet above ground level deliver the largest gains.

### Rooftops

The most practical option for urban deployments. The highest accessible rooftop in a neighborhood, with the antenna mounted on a short mast, gives excellent urban coverage. Flat commercial rooftops are ideal.

### Towers and elevated structures

Communications towers, water towers, and fire lookout towers are excellent platforms. Many communities with amateur radio infrastructure already have tower access - connecting with local ham radio clubs is a good path to shared hosting arrangements.

When co-locating on a registered antenna structure or shared tower, coordinate with the structure owner. RF-exposure (MPE) evaluation and antenna-structure-registration obligations rest with the tower owner, and your Part 15 unlicensed device must not interfere with the licensed services already on the structure.

### Mast installations

A 15 - 30 foot mast in a yard or field dramatically improves line-of-sight over the surrounding area. Particularly effective in flat terrain where even modest height above obstructions makes a large difference.

## Common placement mistakes

- **Hop gobbling:** A poorly placed repeater that is only marginally better than other nodes can consume hop budget without meaningfully extending range. Every hop used by a marginal relay is a hop unavailable for a more distant leg. Place repeaters where they add significant coverage, not just incremental reach.
- **Too many repeaters too close together:** Dense clusters of repeaters can flood the network with redundant retransmissions. Space repeaters to provide overlapping but not excessively redundant coverage.
- **Ignoring the coverage below:** Very high-gain antennas on tall structures can create dead zones directly beneath them. Size antenna gain to match your deployment height.

## Coverage planning tools

- [Meshtastic Site Planner](https://site.meshtastic.org) - the official Meshtastic tool; estimates theoretical coverage from a given location
- [HeyWhatsThat](https://heywhatsthat.com) - third-party tool for radio horizon visualization based on terrain elevation
- [meshmap.net](https://meshmap.net) - third-party community map showing existing Meshtastic nodes near you (only shows nodes reporting to the public MQTT server, so it is incomplete)

Always validate coverage estimates with real-world testing - planning tools do not account for buildings, vegetation, or local RF environment.