MikeA57 wrote

My questions are:
- Does this look like the best place to mount the antenna?
- What other components do I need in addition to the antenna itself?
- Does TP-Link also have mounting masts that I could attach to the side of the house and extend beyond the soffit to get the antenna out away from the house?
- What distance will I likely achieve with this setup?
- Do I need to place another antenna on the MIL house or on the shop when it is built?

The best place for an omnidirectional antenna is in the middle of the area it should cover. But the TL-ANT2412D is strong enough that you could mount it on your house somewhere in a line of sight to the MIL house and the future shop. But: be aware that trees are signal damping obstacles, especially in summer, not so much in winter time!

Anyway, the TL-ANT2412D should cover this area easily. You would need a pigtail cable to connect the antenna to any WiFi router with RP-SMA connectors (most commonly used). This is such a pigtail: http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-5067_TL-ANT200PT.html

Note that with outdoor antennas you have to take care of lightning protection, so you should use a lightning protector/surge arrester. See https://commotionwireless.net/docs/build/grounding-lightning-protection/

TP-Link does not sell antenna masts as far as I know, but ordinary satellite masts usually do the job.

Distance for omnidirectional outdoor antennas such as the TL-ANT2412D could be anything in the range from 100 to 600 meters (sorry, no feet here ;) ) depending on signal loss due obstacles (even air will damp the signal, but also rain, snow, leafs and so on). But beware of the possible distance of client devices such as SmartPhone's, tablet's or laptop's antennas. It is not sufficient that the client device can receive a WiFi signal, they also must be able to send a powerful enough WiFi signal back to the central antenna!

In the MIL house there should be no problem to use typical client devices directly without an additional AP/antenna, but in your future shop it could be a problem (for your client devices, not the TP-Link antenna!), because client devices (laptops, SmartPhones) most often do have much weaker antennas and so it could be of benefit to install an AP at the shop also. For example, TP-Link's CPE210 is a good choice, because it is an AP with built-in antennas. Place such a device behind the shop, so it covers the shop, too. BTW: the advantage of the CPE210 versus TL-ANT2412D in your main house would be the combination of an AP with up to 300 Mbps (@channel width 40 Mhz) or up to 150 Mbps (@channel width 20 MHz) speed with an antenna and easy lightning protection through simple grounding of the device.

Regarding speeds: manufactures specify the maximum speed of wireless frames in the specs and product descriptions. This is not the speed of data packets, which must be encapsulated in wireless frames! You can calculate up to 50% overhead in the 2,4 GHz band meaning that if your AP can achieve 150 Mbps on the WiFi it will perform with about 75 to 80 Mbps on the Ethernet interface. If there are obstacles in the way between client device and antenna, throughput will decrease b/c the client device and the AP will negotiate a lower transmission speed (down to 1 Mbps wireless speed in worst case).

Best is to try the ideal combination of APs and antennas in practice. Hope this helps!

Forgot something: If you build the shop on your own property, you could also consider connecting it through a fiber cable (I would do so, since it is preferable to WiFi).

You will have to install cabling for power supply of the shop anyway, right? If so, install an (outdoor) fiber cable.

TP-Link has affordable media converters which would allow to connect them to a switch in your house and to transfer data through a fiber into the shop. In the shop you could then install an ordinary indoor AP (not necessarily a router) - for example the TL-WA901ND - if you need WiFi there in addition to a local (wired) network.