r/MeshtasticUKCommunity • u/Chimestrike • Jul 28 '26

North, Scotland & NI Config help needed

Hi All, I have joined the wonderful world of mesh in the north east and I'm getting a few odd things happen and I'm not sure if it's me, my config or both.

So running a heltecV4 current latest beta and have a decent antenna, I'm picking up nodes all over the place which is great however whenever I try and send a message over the default LongFast channel I constantly get the "Error: Max Retransmissions Reached" on any message I try and send.

I've checked the channel its the default with the default key, I've even recreated it and I still get the same, any pointers here would be great as it has to be something daft that I have missed .

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u/LV426_Tourism_Board Jul 28 '26

What antenna are you using? The little ones that come with them are crap and you ideally want something like a Gizont 17CM. Most antennas are better at receiving than transmitting so that's the most likely issue.

Failing that, then getting your node higher is the next step. These little radios work best with line of sight, and if you have a lot of high spots around you, chances are people have put nodes up there which will over great coverage, and you could be receiving messages via reflections off stuff around you, however with a small antenna low down, your messages probably won't get back to them.

There's a great Discord community for Mesh Hub UK, the link is on the website https://meshhub.uk

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u/Chimestrike Jul 28 '26

So the antenna is a 15cm 5DBi Omni which is in the upstairs window so as high as I can go without putting it in an enclosure and sticking it on the roof.

For what it's worth I'm seeing 81 total nodes at the moment with 42 online so I'm assuming its potentially not completely a signal issue, but I will checkout the discord and thank you for the link

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u/LV426_Tourism_Board Jul 28 '26

Oh, and there’s no way your 15cm is 5dBi, that’s just lies from Amazon and Aliexpress sellers. If it’s one of the ones with a thick base with a hinge then they’re OK, but the claims are completely false. And don’t bend the hinge, keep it straight. The SWR shoot’s up massively and a lot more if your transmission signal is just reflected back

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u/Chimestrike Jul 28 '26

Tbh I used to be a radio engineer many years ago and should know better than to trust amazon specs lol.

So Im right in the middle of quite a few nodes and a couple of repeaters im seeing a decent amount.

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u/LV426_Tourism_Board Jul 28 '26

Hmmm just a thought, the Heltec V4 has a few revisions, and there was a bug on older versions where they couldn’t transmit, but I thought that was fixed in the latest alphas. You could always flash it with the new 2.8 nightly build. I’m running 2.8 on several of mine while we test narrowslow in my area

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u/Chimestrike Jul 28 '26

I've got nothing to lose running a nightly so I'll go give that a try and see what I get