[MLB-WIRELESS] Sunday fun and debacles

[Fenn Bailey]

Hey All,

As some of you may have known, Sunday was scheduled for a bit of an
RGCentral get-together day at NodeGBJ (richmond) to have a chat and show
some wireless gear/setups/basics to various people in the area. However,
true to form, I stupidly double booked myself in an impossible to get
out of situation, and we all but called it off.

People still popped in and out a bit throughout the day (thanks so much
for those who turned up) and thankfully, the ugly weather from earlier
in the day had cleared, and it was pretty clear (roofs + rain is no
fun). Jules from NodeGKU popped down at around 4ish (I think) and noted
that his node was actually just up the hill from GBJ.

We took a bit of a walk up the hill, and to our pleasant surprise - his
view is awesome... photo-worthy, in fact - and here they are (the
photos, that is):

http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/~fenn/files/NodeGKU-roofview.jpg
http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/~fenn/files/NodeGKU-roofview-westish.jp
g

NodeGBJ can be see quite clearly (not marked on photo, sorry!) along
with LOTS of other places. You can see a big chunk of Richmond - all the
way to South Yarra (probably much further) and a good distance into
Hawthorn/etc.

Excited by such a well placed node (and the outstanding friendlyness of
Jules and his willingness to let us climb about on his roof) we jumped
up there with my AP-in-a-box
(http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/~fenn/files/900ap-inabox0.jpg) with a
superpass antenna and hooked up a temporary node.

You can see pictures of our outstanding, sturdy workmanship here:

http://melbourne.wireless.org.au/~fenn/files/NodeGKU-tempsetup2.jpg

To our disappointment, it didn't work... at all. We waved several
antennas around the roof of NodeGBJ (only about 300m away) and couldn't
get even a sniff out of it. On heading back to GKU, we realised the AP
must have turned off somehow (my dodgy PoE unit, possibly) as we
couldn't get anything. 

Power cycling it brought it back up, but I had suspicions that the
external antenna socket may be playing up because:
 - 1) The signal appeared to drop when the external antenna was
connected
 - 2) Michael Borthwick of NodeBAE couldn't see anything at all either. 

The AP has the 100mW hack applied (and working) so even if a stable
connection couldn't be established, BAE should have DEFINITELY been able
to see Temp-GKU, but to no avail.

So, a bit of a disapointing result - I am going to be doing some further
testing on my AP-in-a-box as it's obviously got some problems. In the
meantime, I would really like to head up to the roof again with some
other method of transmitting (I think a laptop + card is in order) to
see if we can get some better results.

Once we have some assurance that it mostly works, I'm going to call a
bigger, better RGCentral meeting, which, of course, anyone is welcome to
(it will be announced on the list when planned). Similarly, if anyone
from further away in the inner eastern-ish type area thinks they might
be in with a chance of a link to GKU, you might be interested in turning
up and checking out the view.

It really is a nice high area and could probably become a key/core
internlinking node with a bit of work. I may have a look at Locfinder2
soon and see what other nodes look like potential targets for longer
distance links.

I also have a higher-res version of all those images if anyone is
interested.

Thanks,

	Fenn.


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