# Suggested LoRa radio settings for a regional mesh _Help · started by gdane on Thu, May 21, 2026 5:31 PM_ --- ## Original post **gdane** · Thu, May 21, 2026 5:31 PM Working on bootstrapping a Reticulum mesh network in my area (US) to hopefully solve some of the issues with our local Meshtastic and MeshCore networks. Does anybody have suggestions for ideal LoRa radio settings to use that balance speed, reach, and immunity to interference? Note that I'm not concerned about what are the most "popular" settings in my area since we already have good coordination in our community and have the luxury of choosing the settings that suit us best. We've currently adopted "Medium Fast" (bw: 250k, sf: 9) on our Meshtastic network which seems to be workable for the time being, so I thought about using the same settings on a separate frequency for Reticulum. There are also the default MeshCore settings (bw: 62.5k, sf: 7, if I'm not mistaken) that seem to be getting good results. Also wanted to mention that I tried the default Columba settings of "LongFast" (bw: 250k, sf: 11) and had all sorts of issues, including the inability to receive packets larger than about 100 bytes over only a meter distance. This is surprising considering it's also the Meshtastic default and I never noticed the same issues using Meshtastic. --- ## Reply 1 **KenAKAFrosty** · Thu, May 21, 2026 9:57 PM **gdane** wrote: > Working on bootstrapping a Reticulum mesh network in my area (US) to hopefully solve some of the issues with our local Meshtastic and MeshCore networks. Does anybody have suggestions for ideal LoRa radio settings to use that balance speed, reach, and immunity to interference? Note that I'm not concerned about what are the most "popular" settings in my area since we already have good coordination in our community and have the luxury of choosing the settings that suit us best. We've currently adopted "Medium Fast" (bw: 250k, sf: 9) on our Meshtastic network which seems to be workable for the time being, so I thought about using the same settings on a separate frequency for Reticulum. There are also the default MeshCore settings (bw: 62.5k, sf: 7, if I'm not mistaken) that seem to be getting good results. Also wanted to mention that I tried the default Columba settings of "LongFast" (bw: 250k, sf: 11) and had all sorts of issues, including the inability to receive packets larger than about 100 bytes over only a meter distance. This is surprising considering it's also the Meshtastic default and I never noticed the same issues using Meshtastic. Good questions in here. I want to first point out that I'm using Columba, with Heltec V4s, on Long Fast, and it worked quite well. I got 0.5-1 miles in my suburban rural area, with a suboptimal setup (seen here if you're curious haha https://www.reddit.com/r/reticulum/comments/1t3qj27/found_a_nice_place_for_my_rnode_great_for_renters/). All around seemed to work as expected; some interference like hills in the area of course cut me off pretty quick from that angle, but that's just the normal geometry you'd deal with. One thing I'd like to ask is, what power setting did you use? And which board was it? ANywya, in response to your core question I think you're actually in a really awesome spot cuz you have all the information you need to come to a good conclusion here. THe fact you have good coordination makes it quite a bit easier, and it's basically down to two questions: How far do you need it to go, and what kind of data rate is still acceptable to y'all? --- ## Reply 2 **Torlando** · Fri, May 22, 2026 5:29 AM Several people have been kind enough to point out to me that the Lora presets in Columba are not always ideal. There have also been gripes with the naming (that I naively lifted straight from meshtastic). I'd be happy to update the presets and/or include whatever your community lands on in Columba. Although, I think interface discovery is the more sustainable and (obviously) Reticulum native way to achieve this. But interface discovery didn't yet exist when I built the Lora wizard, so, here we are :) Maybe I should add discovered RNode Interface settings to the wizard if they're in some generous radius... --- ## Reply 3 **KenAKAFrosty** · Fri, May 22, 2026 12:33 PM **Torlando** wrote: > Several people have been kind enough to point out to me that the Lora presets in Columba are not always ideal. There have also been gripes with the naming (that I naively lifted straight from meshtastic). > > I'd be happy to update the presets and/or include whatever your community lands on in Columba. Although, I think interface discovery is the more sustainable and (obviously) Reticulum native way to achieve this. But interface discovery didn't yet exist when I built the Lora wizard, so, here we are :) > > Maybe I should add discovered RNode Interface settings to the wizard if they're in some generous radius... Auto discovering the lora settings would be a nice welcome addition to Columba! It's a very thoughtfully built app, btw. Appreciate all the work you put in. The onboarding and way you handled permissions and so on, feels really nice to use --- ## Reply 4 **gdane** · Fri, May 22, 2026 8:05 PM The ultimate goal for our community is to enable long-distance off-grid communication across our wider region using strategically placed nodes; something that is currently impossible due to well known limitations of Meshtastic (and likely also of MeshCore). Fortunately we have the topography to enable placement of transport nodes with very good visibility of the communities they serve, as well as to the transport nodes of neighboring communities. And for some of the vast expanses between we will have transport nodes that will enable multi-hop connection between commnunities. Long story short, we need both valley-wide coverage over a few tens of kilometers and long-range "backbone" connections over sometimes longer ranges (with good LoS). I have no doubt we'll eventually figure out the best compromise in settings. --- ## Reply 5 **KenAKAFrosty** · Fri, May 22, 2026 8:29 PM **gdane** wrote: > The ultimate goal for our community is to enable long-distance off-grid communication across our wider region using strategically placed nodes; something that is currently impossible due to well known limitations of Meshtastic (and likely also of MeshCore). Fortunately we have the topography to enable placement of transport nodes with very good visibility of the communities they serve, as well as to the transport nodes of neighboring communities. And for some of the vast expanses between we will have transport nodes that will enable multi-hop connection between commnunities. Long story short, we need both valley-wide coverage over a few tens of kilometers and long-range "backbone" connections over sometimes longer ranges (with good LoS). I have no doubt we'll eventually figure out the best compromise in settings. glad to hear it! Reticulum is a fantastic choice for your needs, truly. happy you're on board --- ## Reply 6 **Cleeyv** · Sat, May 23, 2026 4:17 AM I just posted this overview that may be helpful: https://rns.recipes/forum/build-guides/how-to-choose-rnode-lora-parameters ---