No need to estimate - and we’d be just guessing on account of us not knowing how high your house is …
It’s all about LINE OF SIGHT!
If you & your magazine of choice can see the antenna on the house whilst your are balanced next to the mailbox antenna, fresnel zone be damned, it should work over 1/3 mile.
If it doesn’t, make it higher.
I dont undestand this.
If I can see a house and its antenna\window I can see it, so I have line of sight.
Why would I want to use a tube or magazine to check if I have line of sight ?
Thanks for all of the input and ideas everyone!! I’ve got some testing to do 
As soon as I get a chance I’ll dig into moving things around and so on. This puts me a on a very good track of where I need to go and what I need to adjust/look into. I do appreciate everyone taking the time to help me out, it is MUCH appreciated!
I wouldn’t expect you to, but I’ve ended up asking for pictures from people, both of what they are seeing and where they are standing when they were seeing it, to try to unravel their interpretation of LoS.
I found the telescope concept used next to the device helped enormously with wishful thinking and, in more than one case, picking the wrong building in the distance …
Dont forget if the mail box is a metal box aka Faraday age DONT put the sensor inside (rookie mistake oft called out on the forum over the years!) and if you can orient such that the box doesnt also shield LOS! 
Well if they can take a picture from the place where they want reception, of the location of the gateway antenna, that is very clear evidence that they have line of sight…
I’d generally get a mobile phone picture of the vague direction they thought something was. But when you have to look through a tube, even if it’s only your hand, it seems to work to get people to actually look at the detail. It may seem crazy, but it’s worked on several occasions and saved some considerable travelling.
Definitely! I was planning on mounting the lds03a on the outside and running the cable/door sensor inside via a drilled hole. Thanks for the heads up - always appreciated!
I wanted to check back in with my findings. I’m totally puzzled by this. So if I have the LPS8 on my deck and the LDS03A out on the deck close to it - it works, I get open and closes. But I move out into the yard, I get nothing. Even when I can see the deck from where I’m testing the LDS03A at. We’re talking about 15-20 ft. I’ve done a factory reset on the LDS03A and the LPS8 and I’ve also updated the firmware on the LDS8 to the latest version. I get the distinct impression this is an antenna or signal setting issue - but I don’t know where to look or how to check. I know on the LDS03A the antenna appears connected to the board ok. The LDS8 has a 915 antenna that gets screwed into a female like antenna spot on the unit. I know this stuff should be all running in the 915 US range - and shows as such when I do get data. Now I will say, I bought the LDS8 second hand off ebay - but it’s in great shape so far as I can tell. Anything I can look at (rssi etc?) to try and detrmine if this is a radio antenna issue?
Monitor the RSSI values for uplinks as seen on the GW Console page and see what happens as you move around and change orientation. Ideally you want to be in a range -50 to -115. Also check orientation of antennas. Re eBay buy - that may explain why it was being sold though I also use eBay to buy and sell legit devices (usually new), its possible it has seen static damage or other abuse impairing tx/rx capabilities, also make sure polarity/gender of ant connection is consistent with direct connection female to female may work short range after a fashion due to capacitive coupling etc. but check to be sure male/female.
Extreme short range you seem to be having, but may not be since I dont know about your ‘yard’ or ‘deck’, has two common causes in my exeperience;
I agree @LoRaTracker - I’ll reach out to the seller and see if had any issues as well. I think this is closer to the issue of anything we’ve discussed. I’ll let y’all know if I turn up anything.
@Jeff-UK - I agree with you also, I’ve bought and sold a lot off ebay and only had one or two bad transactions over all that time - this might be another. I’ll watch the rssi and see how we do - that’s a start. I’ve also emailed the ebay seller to see if he had any issues (hopefully they are honest - you just never know)
The lds03A is new from Dragino - so I’d expect hopefully nothing wrong with it.
the ebay seller got back to me - "I never tested with IoT devices. My use-case was to test and play around with onboarding a data-only miner on Helium network. I was able to register the miner on the network and pass data packets. I’m pretty sure I did a factory reset as to not leave any config on the device.
Yes, I would expect range to be way more than 10 ft. for LoRa. Not sure what the problem could be? I believe you can have different firmware on this device. Are you using the correct one for your use-case? I used the software from this link:
Dragino Data Only Hotspot Setup | Helium Documentation"
So that’s all I’ve got on it.
So I have everything plugged in here in my lab - see screenshot - both units are about 3 ft from each other - any thoughts on rssi etc?
EDIT: That seems at -124 VERY low. So most likely an antenna issue?
Have you checked the antenna connectors are a female/male pair? You wouldn’t be the user with two female type connectors (no center pin on either side) resulting in no active antenna connection.
@kersing - I went ahead and checked again - and yes, pins on both side of the lps8.
I took it off and made sure it was tight on both ends.
current test after checking the antenna -
…as mentioned 3 hrs ago - and check bth the node and the GW ant connections.
Also going forward if/when you do get them working
is W A A A Y Y! too close they will be shouting at each other and potential (almost certainly) overloading respective front ends… look at 3m, pref 10m seperation and with an absorber such as a window or wall inbetween - look for good RSSI values also as mentioned earlier…you might get lucky in the -35 → -50 range but makes debugging a nightmare as risk of channel bleed and saturation very high…
Should be pin (male) one side and hole (female) other, though 2 pin may conect with side displacement - ant grounds might not then connect well…
@Jeff-UK - I just moved in into a room outside my office - difference - looks like I need to move further…
