Along the lines that Dylan mentioned, my home HamWAN connection on Morgan Hill in Port Townsend uses a 30dBi dish mounted in a tree pointed at Gold Mt 40 mi to the South.  It's powered by a 100 watt solar panel (and a small lead-acid battery) to keep the radio up 24x7.  The 100 watt solar cell produces more than enough power to keep the radio up and the battery topped off, even on overcast days.  There are some considerations when using battery for powering the radios--mainly the voltage drop over cat5 cable. 

I'm planning to swing the dish a few degrees clockwise once the Blyn sectors come online.  Right now Blyn only has point-to-point connections to SnowDEM and Triangle Mt.

John kx7jm



---- On Tue, 14 Jul 2020 20:31:58 -0700 Dylan Ambauen <dylan@ambauen.com> wrote ----

Hi Bob,

Good to hear from you again, we met at Valley Camp last year. It would be very cool to interconnect the islands. The west coast of Bainbridge has a good view of Seattle cell sites.
We can't get around line-of-sight. It is one big exercise in finding a LOS path. Rob's request for site details would help drill down on specifics.

Seems like nobody from the Netops Team is available this Saturday morning. A future zoom meeting would be much more interesting with specifics to discuss. What questions do your members have? 

An often overlooked concept behind HamWAN is that it is less about "the Internet" and more about reliable communication between sites A and B that you care about.
From the San Juans, probably easiest to get LOS by shooting across the water. Does anyone have access to a ridgeline or hilltop? Cell sites can easily run with a solar panel and a battery, and can mount to a tree. 

General information and hardware requirements are published at hamwan.org 


Blyn just came online, and is located at:
Latitude 48.006681 (48° 0' 24'' N)
Longitude -122.972646 (122° 58' 21'' W)
Any interested HAM could start by determining if you have line-of-sight to this or other hamwan cell sites.

Use a high-gain dish to shoot long distances, and a 120 deg sector antenna to re-broadcast the signal.

Bainbridge HAMs are also welcome of course. Kitsap ARS has expressed interest too. John Hays K7VE suggested "Suquamish tower and perhaps at the Casino up at Little Boston, they would have good visibility and coverage for client nodes." in this thread about a Bill of Materials for a Cell Site.

Here are 2 emails I've sent before, copy and pasting in here for some examples and more info. Please pardon borrowing from other conversations without full context.

Example #1) KARS Field Day

Team, I just popped over to Mountain View Middle School to test the connection to HamWAN @ Gold Mtn. Worked great! Brem SD Tech Director Mike walked out to ask what's up, and explained that Field Day is usually in the back field, whereas I was setup in the front parking lot. 

On Friday, we'll need to identify a site location for my dish, with line-of-sight to Gold Mtn. We could also colocate a regular old wifi hotspot, fed from my dish. Probably best to have AC power, instead of battery all day, but I can provide a bigger battery if necessary. Keep me posted on timeline/plans for Friday setup. 


2. Line-of-sight to Gold Mtn, easily identified by all the towers
20190619_113940.jpg
3. Powering the device with a 12v battery, and a Mikrotik mUPS PoE injector. 
20190619_114240.jpg

Zoomed view of Gold Towers, rough visual aim was sufficient.
20190619_114443.jpg


We have a 44/net ip address

[dylan@KI7SBI-Survey] > /ip address print 

Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic 

 #   ADDRESS            NETWORK         INTERFACE                                                                                

 0   192.168.88.1/24    192.168.88.0    bridge                                                                                   

 1 D 44.24.240.108/28   44.24.240.96    wlan1  


And, here are stats on the wireless connection. Connected to Sector 2.

[dylan@KI7SBI-Survey] > /interface wireless monitor 0 

                      ;;; KI7SBI mobile to K7WAN

                  status: connected-to-ess

                 channel: 5900/5/an

       wireless-protocol: nv2

                 tx-rate: 7.2Mbps-5MHz/2S/SGI

                 rx-rate: 6.5Mbps-5MHz/2S

                    ssid: HamWAN

                   bssid: E4:8D:8C:F1:6D:22

              radio-name: Gold-S2/K7WAN

         signal-strength: -62dBm

     signal-strength-ch0: -66dBm

     signal-strength-ch1: -65dBm

      tx-signal-strength: -67dBm

  tx-signal-strength-ch0: -71dBm

  tx-signal-strength-ch1: -70dBm

             noise-floor: -124dBm

         signal-to-noise: 62dB

                  tx-ccq: 38%

                  rx-ccq: 35%

   authenticated-clients: 1

        current-distance: 16

                wds-link: no

                  bridge: no

        routeros-version: 6.43.4

                 last-ip: 44.24.244.4

       current-tx-powers: 6Mbps:27(27/30),9Mbps:27(27/30),12Mbps:27(27/30),

                          18Mbps:27(27/30),24Mbps:27(27/30),36Mbps:27(27/30),

                          48Mbps:25(25/28),54Mbps:24(24/27),HT20-0:27(27/30),

                          HT20-1:27(27/30),HT20-2:27(27/30),HT20-3:27(27/30),

                          HT20-4:27(27/30),HT20-5:27(27/30),HT20-6:25(25/28),

                          HT20-7:23(23/26)

     notify-external-fdb: no




Example #2)

Here is a smaller radio, connected to capitol park cell site. Shorter range, less gain.
20181223_112817.jpg

I buy this hardware from streakwave.com, reliable source for the ROW model radios, and good prices.

MikroTik mANT30 parabolic dish antenna 5GHz 30dBi MTAD-5G-30D3

Dish also comes with a “precision alignment” mount. 


Radio Modem

MikroTik RouterBOARD RB912UAG-5HPnD-OUT MIMO modem
You must order the ROW (rest of world) AKA International version NOT the US version.

Amazon has them for $89.95 free Prime shipping but, you may not get the ROW version.


Optional

If you are in a noisy environment, you may want to buy the optional. We use this on towers.
MikroTik Sleeve30 Kit - Kit for mANT30 Parabolic Antenna


These are also options, integrated dish and radio, very nice, cheaper, less dB gain on the dishes, so less range.

https://mikrotik.com/product/RBLHG-5nD

https://mikrotik.com/product/RBLHG-5HPnD

https://mikrotik.com/product/RBLHG-5HPnD-XL

even a flat panel like this:

https://mikrotik.com/product/RBSXTsq5nD


Any Mikrotik 5Ghz Dual Chain device will work. We can choose hardware based on the range(gain), size, and cost.


I used a cheap speaker stand from amazon, I think a nicer stand would be key to a reliable mobile setup. 


As far as your internet connected repeater, where is that located? We need Line of Site to an existing HamWAN cell site. We'd basically make the same set of hardware choices to choose what to hang on a tower, or install wherever your repeater is. If you have LOS to multiple HamWAN sites, we could have 2 separate links.


IP addressing is 44/net public, dhcp. We can make static ip reservations by cell site. Winlink is very easy, since it is a public IP address, there is no port forwarding to configure, unless we choose to set our own firewall rules. If there are multiple hosts (cpu, repeater) at a site, they can all have individual public/static ip addresses, if that is desired.


---
Dylan Ambauen
KI7SBI


---
Dylan Ambauen
360-850-1200


On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 4:50 PM Bob Stephens <af9w@bobandgloria.com> wrote:

Yes, if we can get a speaker, anyone can attend our Zoom meetings.  I would only need a list of email addresses to send the Zoom link to

 

Bob Stephens AF9W

Island County EC/RO

 

From: PSDR <psdr-bounces@hamwan.org> On Behalf Of lionelhlvrsn@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2020 3:24 PM
To: 'Puget Sound Data Ring' <psdr@hamwan.org>
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] HamWan Speaker

 

Hello all,

I saw a response that addressed the line of site questions, but not the speaker question. Perhaps I overlooked that one. If a speaker is arranged, there are a number of hams (including myself) on Bainbridge Island who would be very interested in attending. Would this be possible?

-Lionel Halvorsen

K7BIX

206-778-3368

 

From: PSDR <psdr-bounces@hamwan.org> On Behalf Of Bob Stephens
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:00 AM
To: psdr@hamwan.org
Subject: [HamWAN PSDR] HamWan Speaker

 

I hope it is ok to post this request to this forum.  I am the President of the Island County ARC on Whidbey and the Island County ARES/RACES EC/RO.  We are looking at creating a digital network on the Island for EMCOMM using packet and Winlink both VHF/UHF and HF.  We have looked at HamWan for the island before but our EOC’s do not have line of site.  The island has lots of trees and topography that makes line of site anything difficult.  We do have some hams that live near the water that might have HamWan access, especially when Blyn comes online.  Most of these hams are recently new and don’t know much about HamWan.  I was wondering if there was someone who could do a Zoom presentation introducing HamWan to our club on July 25th.  The Zoom would start shortly after the meeting is called to order at 9:30am. 

 

Bob Stephens AF9W

President, Island County Amateur Radio Club

Island County Amateur Radio Emergency Coordinator

Island County RACES Radio Officer

Home:  360-579-4257

Cell: 520-576-3087

 

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