Nigel, Thank you for answering my questions. 1) In my limited knowledge, all the links were suppose to have the extra identification labels, so one with just Bart's callsign confused me. No biggy, now that I know. 2) Oh yea, what would the LED's be referencing if I was scanning. (Doh!) 3) I knew the Cougar link was locked down, so I didn't even try to associate with it. But this was a major success for me, even just seeing it was something that hasn't happen in the past. NOTE: I didn't spend a lot of time trying to optimize either signal, so this was just a quick and dirty test. The dish was on a hacked up stand, which was only about four feet off the ground. I didn't even try to adjust the elevation, only swinging it horizontally. (of course I couldn't see the laptop screen and move the antenna at the same time. :-) Thanks Kenny On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Nigel Vander Houwen <nigel@k7nvh.com> wrote:
Kenny,
In regards to the Capitol-Park to Cougar link, you did see it. It's the 10Mhz channel marked as AE7SJ. Most of the network uses Bart's callsign for identification, and it seems that particular link doesn't have the extra detail on what it is. So, yes, you saw the "Cougar" link, not Bart's home link.
The LEDs don't light up during scan mode. (What would the reference against?) The LEDs will only light up when the radio is associated with an AP, namely one of our cell sites.
As for connecting to the cougar link, that's a link on part15 and has been secured, so your modem won't be able to connect to it, even though you can see it. That's why you see the 'P' letter in the flags section. The sector on Haystack showed ART which tells you it's Active, running on RouterOS, and uses TDMA, the P stands for Privacy.
In any case, congrats on the signal survey, neither is terribly strong, but it's certainly something!
Nigel K7NVH
On Mar 7, 2014, at 1:00 PM, Kenny Richards <richark@gmail.com> wrote:
Since the weather decided to not suck this morning, I did a quick 'site survey' from the Newcastle Golf Course parking lot. (N 47.53602, W 122.14272 @ 919 feet)
I have attempted to get connected from my house several times, but haven't had any success. Before going back up on the tower, I wanted to try connecting from what I expected to be a REALLY good location. I'm only about a mile as the crow flies the Newcastle Golf course, so it is my go to place for this kind of thing.(I'm about 500 feet lower though) From the edge of the golf course parking lot you can see all of downtown, right over the top of Mercer Island. (See attached picture)
So I had expected to connect to the PtP link at Capital Park without any problems, since I can SEE the damn building from up there. But nope, still no luck. I was able to see two other sites and associate with them. I knew there was a node going up on Haystack, but I was surprised how easy it was to connect to it. What I really don't get is how I was seeing AE7SJ's home link. Isn't it pointed at DEM? (Or is AE7SJ something else?)
I also discovered something else that confuses me. I saw thayward@ use the LED signal indicators on the radio a couple weeks ago. But this afternoon, I never got even one bar. Do you have to enable them before they work? (I'll have to dig into the docs on this one) I would assume at least one bar would light up with these signal strengths, right?
So my next step is taking a trip downtown with the portable setup and see if I can find a spot semi-close to Capital Park and try to connect. My gut is telling me that something is fundamentally wrong with the PtP link or how I have things setup on my end. The golf course isn't 'exactly' in between downtown and the Cougar Mnt site, but it is really close. So if this link is going to work as it was intended, I should have been able to connect from up there.
I also attached the config dump from the radio.
Thoughts?
Kenny
Output from Scan... Flags: A - active, P - privacy, R - routeros-network, N - nstreme, T - tdma, W - wds, B - bridge ADDRESS SSID BAND CHANNEL-WIDTH FREQ SIG NF SNR RADIO-NAME A RT D4:CA:6D:62:D7:ED HamWAN 5ghz-n 5mhz 5890 -88 -117 29 Haystack-S3/AE7SJ APRT 00:0C:42:E0:4F:AC HamWAN 5ghz-n 10mhz 5475 -87 -117 30 AE7SJ
<DownTownfromGolfCourse.JPG>
<CaptParktoNewcastleGolfShot.png>
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