This week I had to replace a year-old Mikrotik LHGG deployed in a very rural area. It was a bit worse for wear after a year exposed to the elements but otherwise fine - though I still believe that front heatsink isn't the best solution for regional Australia. This is a LHGG I posted about last year, modified with a Quectel EM12G cat 12 modem instead of the original Mikrotik cat6 job.

Anyway, I got back home and as I disassembled the mount (QMP LHG) to my surprise I find an ant colony, complete with queen, in the gap between the quick mount and the parabolic reflector! They were living in the bit that looks like a waffle grill, tiny little ants, their eggs/larvae, queen, the works.

So I get rid of them with bug spray and a pressure wash and proceed to disassemble the actual unit for storage when I notice some larger, black ants in the little compartment where the ethernet cable goes. I shake these off and decide to check inside the modem/antenna unit. Lid off and... another ant colony!! Now these are larger and have a few soldier ants among them, so I carefully remove the motherboard/antenna (they apparently hadn't chewed on the electronics, thankfully!), apply some more bug spray & pressure wash the plastic case. There were fewer of the big ants, but still! Two ant colonies in a single antenna!

My guess is that they liked the safety of being high up, the warmth from ARM processors and LTE modems and made themselves at home. I also sealed some bits with silicone and I've seen ants chewing silicone seals before, so maybe that's what attracted the larger ones. The electric enclosure (housing powerline ethernet adapter and PoE injector) is IP-rated with better seals and cable glands so at first glance no critters installed themselves in there, but I only checked it quickly while installing the new antenna. Maybe it's teeming with ants. Ugh.

Funny thing is I drove 200 km back home without noticing anything and the antenna was right next to me in the passenger seat of my ute. In the future I'll be more careful with equipment I remove from the field.

I was so taken aback (and desperate to get rid of the insects!) that I didn't take any photos of the colonies, but there's an "after the fact" image in the gallery below where you can still see two of the big ones in the plastic case and if you look closely there's one the smaller ants as well. The two other images are LHGG motherboard front & back with adapted EM12G modem.

https://imgur.com/a/FYZ1D3f

Does anyone have similar bug-related stories? Oh, and BTW, does Mikrotik sell LHG/LHGG enclosures separately as spare parts? I broke one of the lid tabs while taking the thing apart, the top one. (In my defence it was discoloured from exposure to intense sunlight & was probably ready to go anyway)

Eeew indeed !
Now I got to add a new chore on my list when we go back for France... check SXT casing and holes.

Eeew indeed !
Now I got to add a new chore on my list when we go back for France... check SXT casing and holes.

I left an SXT R + Quectel EP06 there in lieu of this LHGG! Easier setup, dual SIM for redundance, similar-if-not-quite-same real-world performance.

Now that I think about it, the ethernet cable slot on SXT is a prime ant entry point - for the tiny ones at least. I should've sealed it. Otherwise I think SXT is better protected than LHGG (no vents, for instance). SXT also uses a different mount without the honeycomb/waffle interfaces that created a multi-chambered environment for the bugs.

Are the EM12g compliant over here? If so do you know where I might be able to get the compliance doc's for the set up with the LHGG?

Are the EM12g compliant over here? If so do you know where I might be able to get the compliance doc's for the set up with the LHGG?

They have the A-Tick stamp if that's what you mean, and work with all frequency bands available here. You can pretty much follow guides for EP06 setup, modem commands are the same. In my case I basically set it up for USB mode and updated RouterOS to version 7 and was good to go. I didn't lock bands or lock the modem to a particular operator site.