Here's a 1984 vintage PDF for passive microwave repeater engineering: https://az276019.vo.msecnd.net/valmontstaging/vsna-resources/microflect-passive-repeater-

Here's a 1984 vintage PDF for passive microwave repeater engineering: https://az276019.vo.msecnd.net/valmontstaging/vsna-resources/microflect-passive-repeater-catalog.pdf?sfvrsn=6 https://az276019.vo.msecnd.net/valmontstaging/vsna-resources... For the most part these are almost obsolete, the typical data link that many of them carried was one DS3, or at most, three DS3... The path loss is extreme. Usual setup was to go from a small town central office (CO), 3-5 km up to a nearby mountain, then bounce it off there, and 25-30 km to another nearby mountain. With big old power hungry PTP microwave gear that occupied a full 42U rack, took 1200W of power, and carried a whole lot of DS0. Nowadays a modern PTP microwave radio that can carry 1400Mbps full duplex in the 6 or 11 GHz bands is as little as 35W of power, so many hilltop tower sites either have built electrical grid connections, off grid solar, or whatever. Building some of those passive repeater billboards in places with no road access was very costly. Big helicopter bills and very labor intensive. You can still see a number of them on hillsides in eastern Oregon.