Another new site has been setup at Athelstone and is now operational.
Athelstone uses two Mitsubishi R100 units.
One is configured for an accesspoint with a high powered radio and a 9dbi Collinear Omni in Vertical Polarisation. The other R100 unit configured as a backbone to Valley-View in 802.11a.
Thankyou to the volunteers who gave much of their time to assist in getting this access point fully operational. The site is managed by Shadey and additional backbones are being considered for the future.
Pictures from the first install
The professional power supply
The professional waterproof box
The professional human GPS
Bribe..I mean feed..the workers
Starting to come together
mmmmm guy wire fun
More guy wire fun. The bottom of the mast is attached with a U-bolt to a hills tin roof mount, which is bolted through top rafters of the shed
Turnbuckle ready to be tightened, but not for the last time..
After all that.. "No Scan Results" on 802.11a. Luckily the omni antenna could be used as a temporary Air-Stream connection.
Install Part 2
It turned out that the modified (for 5.8 GHz) grid antenna was useless, I guess we should have tested it properly before putting it into production. Anyway the grid was replaced with a brand new hills 5-5.8 GHz grid, unfortunately there are no pictures from that "install" because it was done at 11pm at night by two people. In any case it would be a bit hard to take photos when both hands and head are being used to hold up a mast in gully winds. Special thanks to DrGeforce for coming out on that crazy night.
Install Part 3
However that was not to be the last part of the story. In the hastiness and darkness of that night a guy wire somehow got snagged around the top of the guy plate. It would not come loose without pulling the whole thing down again, even though there was now a stable 5.8 GHz wireless connection, the mast guying needed to be fixed. Thanks to more volunteers this was taken care of on another occasion, in about 30 minutes. A second set of guy wires is now attached and the rig is solid. The most recent picture can be seen on the top of this page.
