Any other ideas on how to experiment with hamwan?
Hi folks, I was hoping to take some time this summer during my work sabbatical to build a station on hamwan and experiment with it, my idea was to experiment with voice over IP with concurrent downloads/uploads and fq_codel to do traffic shaping and see how a saturated link performed. But I just mapped out my home location and things don't look good. Here's where I'm at: 47°41′5″ N 122°21′48″ W 270ft Looking at Gold Mountain: Distance = 37.889 km (23.543 miles) Azimuth, Point 1 to Point 2: 247.21° True Azimuth, Point 2 to Point 1: 66.86 ° True I'm shielded to the south by Queen Anne, to the east by Phinney Ridge, and when I look out towards Gold Mountain all I see are tree tops and one or two roofs. This is from a third-floor balcony in my townhouse, while I could probably get another 10 feet of elevation on my roof, I'm scared to go on the roof and I'm 90% sure that doesn't give me any line of sight. Am I correct in assuming that I'm pretty much out of luck with my QTH? I'd really prefer to be able to run things from here if at all possible. But if there isn't a creative solution, it looks like I'm going to have to figure out a portable solution. I came across this post documenting a mobile station that someone had built: https://cdine.org/2017-11-19-portable-hamwan-station/ Would the high power version help with range? it's not clear to me which side tends to be the limiter in HamWan. https://mikrotik.com/product/sxtsq_5_high_power Then I need to find a place where I can set up within range and not sit in sun the whole day. Thanks, Chris -- Chris Prosser chris@nart.org
Hi Chris, I didn't see another response to your question, so took a quick look at where you are versus Gold. I came up with only slightly different numbers than you did, but as you note, it does not look promising. Taking a guess at which townhouse you are in (your coordinates resolved to the middle of an intersection), I show your bearing to Gold to be 64.69 degrees at a range of 21.95 miles. There is a ridgeline west of you between 9th and 10th that is 284 feet (ground level), and you are at 267 feet (ground level). A three story townhouse is going to be what - maybe 30 feet above ground level at the roof? Guessing. So that would put you at about 297 feet. You would just barely squeeze over the ridgeline to your west, assuming there was nothing there (house, etc.). And I'm sure there is something there, so basically you are a no-go for Gold. Further, even if you could just barely squeeze over the top of that bump, it would drastically interfere with what is known as your Fresnel zone, which for a shot as far away as Gold would have about a 70 foot radius (in simple terms, that means you need to be another 70 feet higher). The last piece of bad news is you are about 5 degrees inside the far boundary of the sector (it goes from 60 degrees to 180 degrees), and the best signal is near the center of the sector with weaker signals as you approach the edges. I'm north of you, and am only about 2 degrees inside the sector. I've got a clear line of sight to Gold with some minor near-end Fresnel zone interference, and I just barely get a usable signal with a 2 foot dish when conditions are good, and an unusable signal when conditions are poor. So I'm sorry to say, the chances of you getting something to work are slim to none at your location. I took a quick look at your shot to Haystack, and you've got a 470 foot high obstacle too close to you to get over. So that won't work either. Maybe sometime down the road we'll find another site to put sectors on that you can see. A city with hills and trees is not a promising place to try and find HamWAN shots unfortunately. Carl, N7KUW -----Original Message----- From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces@hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Chris Prosser via PSDR Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2019 10:21 AM To: psdr@hamwan.org Subject: [HamWAN PSDR] Any other ideas on how to experiment with hamwan? Hi folks, I was hoping to take some time this summer during my work sabbatical to build a station on hamwan and experiment with it, my idea was to experiment with voice over IP with concurrent downloads/uploads and fq_codel to do traffic shaping and see how a saturated link performed. But I just mapped out my home location and things don't look good. Here's where I'm at: 47°41′5″ N 122°21′48″ W 270ft Looking at Gold Mountain: Distance = 37.889 km (23.543 miles) Azimuth, Point 1 to Point 2: 247.21° True Azimuth, Point 2 to Point 1: 66.86 ° True I'm shielded to the south by Queen Anne, to the east by Phinney Ridge, and when I look out towards Gold Mountain all I see are tree tops and one or two roofs. This is from a third-floor balcony in my townhouse, while I could probably get another 10 feet of elevation on my roof, I'm scared to go on the roof and I'm 90% sure that doesn't give me any line of sight. Am I correct in assuming that I'm pretty much out of luck with my QTH? I'd really prefer to be able to run things from here if at all possible. But if there isn't a creative solution, it looks like I'm going to have to figure out a portable solution. I came across this post documenting a mobile station that someone had built: https://cdine.org/2017-11-19-portable-hamwan-station/ Would the high power version help with range? it's not clear to me which side tends to be the limiter in HamWan. https://mikrotik.com/product/sxtsq_5_high_power Then I need to find a place where I can set up within range and not sit in sun the whole day. Thanks, Chris -- Chris Prosser chris@nart.org _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.net/mailman/listinfo/psdr
Maybe sometime down the road we'll find another site to put sectors on that you can see. A city with hills and trees is not a promising place to try and find HamWAN shots unfortunately.
When I heard of the 'data ring' concept used by HamWAN I thought it was so cool I started building my own. That's an option for any one any where. Start with a client node and a single backbone node.
From there add a couple more radios you'll have a real backbone of two units and a client link and a client radio.
Just getting that going will be an education unbelievable. Done right - it'll let you take the client node portable and then hook up to one of the mainline nodes when you have a good location. A 'real' parking lot data ring will take six backbone radios for 3 nodes with dedicated point-to-point links and a client access radio for each node. 9 radios total plus how ever many clients you need.. A little over the top perhaps. Why not - folks in all other hobbies are getting equally involved and spending way more... Bill, WA7NWP
Hey Bill, Wow. I hadn’t even considered that. I’ve been fascinated by WISPs. With the gear I already have at home (two edgerouters from Ubiquiti) I then only need the two PtMP radios. I can set up the tunnel to the 44net using my home internet. I have a nice park right next door to run tests from. I have not found the Mikrotik web site very useful. Any suggestions for a cheap sector radio? Can I just use one of the client radios and configure it as a sector (of course the directionality won’t be ideal, but fine for me in a point to point fashion). Thanks! Sent from my iPhone On Mar 12, 2019, at 18:14, Bill Vodall <wa7nwp@gmail.com> wrote:
Maybe sometime down the road we'll find another site to put sectors on that you can see. A city with hills and trees is not a promising place to try and find HamWAN shots unfortunately.
When I heard of the 'data ring' concept used by HamWAN I thought it was so cool I started building my own. That's an option for any one any where. Start with a client node and a single backbone node. From there add a couple more radios you'll have a real backbone of two units and a client link and a client radio.
Just getting that going will be an education unbelievable. Done right - it'll let you take the client node portable and then hook up to one of the mainline nodes when you have a good location.
A 'real' parking lot data ring will take six backbone radios for 3 nodes with dedicated point-to-point links and a client access radio for each node. 9 radios total plus how ever many clients you need..
A little over the top perhaps. Why not - folks in all other hobbies are getting equally involved and spending way more...
Bill, WA7NWP _______________________________________________ PSDR mailing list PSDR@hamwan.org http://mail.hamwan.net/mailman/listinfo/psdr
participants (3)
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Bill Vodall -
Carl -
Chris Prosser