+1 to any commentary from Tom/Kenny. A round of thanks to Tony and Steve who answered the call for volunteers. -Doug-, KD7DK HamWAN board and NetOps On Sat, Jul 20, 2024 at 8:06 PM <rob@nr3o.com> wrote:
Lookout is back online with all gear operational. Sectors 1 and 2 should both be reachable again.
As with the problem last year when S3 and the SnoDEM PTP were repaired, these problems were also cable problems.
It is notable that the cable problems were not of our making or of our cabling itself, but that it was damaged (twice now) when an unsecured 1” RF hardline was causing damage to nearby gear (including ours) on the tower. There was also unsecured cables to what appears to be a substantial yet abandoned weather station at the top of the tower. This cable was broken in multiple places. Broken pieces around our gear have been removed and we secured as much of the hardline as we could that runs near our gear with temporary fixes. We’ll need to work with the facility owner to see if we can get that particular hardline mounted properly.
We also took up a wall mount patch panel that has become part of the new changes we’re making to sites going forward. The CAT cables from the tower are run first to the patch panel in a manner that allows any water into the CAT cable jacket to drain out prior to hitting the RJ45 connectors and causing shorts and corrosion.
In the case of Lookout we were fortunate – while all of the failed cables had water in the jacket to the inside of the facility, the cables were mounted in such a way that water didn’t get into the RJ45s or the lightning arrestors. Because of this there was no damage to lightning arrestors, POE power supplies, or our sector/PtP gear on the tower. An additional visit will be made at a later date (no climbers needed) to integrate this into the setup along with correct length patch cables for between the patch panel and the lightning arrestors.
A BIG thanks to Kenny and Tom for the tower work. There was as much (arguably more) work cleaning up the mess left by the hardline and weather station cables than there was running new CAT cable for our stuff. Thanks also to Tony and Steve for their help on the ground. All in all it went (I thought) >very< well. It’s been a long time since we’ve had Lookout in full operation.
If any of you have used Sectors 1 or 2 in the past, please give them a test and let me know the results via the netops@hamwan.org mailing list.
Tom / Kenny – feel free to chime in with your observations and/or corrections as you had the best view from the tower.
Cheers,
Rob Salsgiver – NR3O _______________________________________________ Netops mailing list Netops@hamwan.org https://mail01.fmt.hamwan.net/mailman/listinfo/netops