Go West

With the network growing rapidly to the North and soon the South we are starting to see the West beginning to blossom with activity. The West is one of the hardest areas in Adelaide to establish a wireless network but when people work together it is amazing what only a few people can achieve if they work together.

If you have a roof with views in the Western Suburbs and haven’t yet thought of joining the wireless community movement now has never been a better time…

Grange Sailing Club

Information

Installation is being planned for the future.

Line of Sight

download medium size image (545KB)

This panorama includes from left (north) to right (south):
Grange Jetty
Grange Road and Seaview Road
Central Bussiness District (in the distance)
Mount Lofty (in the distance)
Appartments next door
Henley Beach front

Satelite Image

34°54'28.42"S 138°29'25.76"E

Site Survey

Survey was done with a 200mw Senao PCMCIA card with a short pigtail and a 19db pacmon.

Survey shows links to Seaton, Glen Osmand and Skye are possible.
Grange did not show up during the survey.

20051203173342_gsc_19db_pacmon_v.ns1 In vertical.
20051203173342_gsc_19db_pacmon_h.ns1 In horizontal.

Survey done: 3-12-2005

Heading South

Plans are now underway to expand coverage in the South beginning 2009 and your help is needed. Air-Stream Wireless is now the largest community wireless network in Australia and covers hundreds of square kilometers from North to South. Consequently, with the success of the 2008 Go West Plan mostly complete, the Network Planning Committee (NPC) are turning their attention to the South for 2009. The NPC have begun by working with the South Coast Amateur Radio Club (SCARC) to help interconnect Two-Way radio repeaters and packet radio systems into the Air-Stream Network to use systems like IRLP and the Echolink Amateur Radio Network. There are three main sites currently targeted for work, the first O'Halloran Hill which will have a major upgrade. Hackham West (SCARC Club House) and Mt Terrible (SCARC Repeater). Also there will be a number of other sites of SCARC members yet to be site surveyed and other links into the SouthernWifi network yet to be agreed and planned. Nevertheless, the Air-Stream Wireless network would not have the size and coverage it has today without members, and for this new plan to be successful we also need membership and others to participate meaningfully. Please contact the committee to find out how you can help, even one extra person can make a real difference. Members may view in detail and add potential nodes for the South through the members node database and mapping system..

Kingston Park

Site Located at Kingston Park

25db Backbone to Glenelg AP

Serving Clients via a 8db Superpass (vertical polarisation)

Tested OK from brighton beach ~4km
300k/s 7db magmount with senao 100 leeching off of the omni.

Current Setup the 25db is only reaching the very edge of the WG as it is pointing due east, and Kingston Park is directly south.
only getting a max of about 50k/s each way.

With glenelg upgrade soon this should increase bandwith.

Largs Bay

My 1st attempt at a communal wireless connection has / is up and working.

I have hooked up my father and a mate to my home network and the Internet
All via two (2) WAP54G's to my WRT54G.

My mates WAP54g is sitting on his computer desk in his house.

My WRT54G is mounted into a weather-proof box mounted to the inside side of the houses chimney facing the roof. (not inside the chimney). Having it set on diversity I have two (2) six foot (6')N -RPTNC LMR400 cables going to:-
a. home made Cantenna
b. 19dbi Conifer.

My fathers WAP54G is mounted inside his roof space in the same weather -proof box as mine is with a ten foot (10') N -RPTNC LMR400 cable. Connecting him to a 9dbi Omni.

Both weather-proof boxes have been equiped with PoE units from Linksys (PoE 12's)

I hope to add some pictures shortly, as it doesnt sound as good with out them.

Northfield

Current Site Status:
Partly Operational

Work Scheduled:
Aprill 2006

Project Details:

• A new 802.11a dedicated backbone for Elizabeth Tower
• A new 802.11a dedicated backbone for Vally View
• A new 802.11a dedicated backbone for Ottoway
• Install new 802.11b for main AP

People scheduled:

• Robert
• Paul
• Arno
• Troy
• Chris
• Didz

Equipment required:

• 2 x New Wrap 2 with POE
• 3 x 5Ghz Dipoles
• 1 x 5ghz stumble rig
• Tools

Dependencies:

• Ticketed Climber - Paul

Ottoway

Current Site Status:
Site currently down

Work Scheduled:
September 2006

Project Details:

• 802.11a dedicated backbone to Pasadena
• 802.11a dedicated backbone to Northfield
• 802.11b dedicated backbone to Ridleyton
• 802.11b high power Access Point

People scheduled:

• Ben Burrows
• Brian
• Robert
• Chris
• Didz

Equipment required:

• Security Monitoring System
• 3 x CM9 and 1 x SR2
• 2 x 5.8Ghz Antenna or dipole

Dependencies:

• ?

SAPUG

Current Site Status:
Site currently down

Work Scheduled:
May 2006

Project Details:

• 802.11b dedicated backbone to Carrick Hill
• 802.11b Access Point

People scheduled:

• Steve
• Troy
• Robert

Equipment required:

• Security Monitoring System
• 2 x ethernet APs

Dependencies:

• ?

Air-Stream-APANA

The Australian Public Access Network Association SA (APANA) Node on North Terrace was upgraded on 3rd February 2007. This was one of the first sites in the Air-Stream network to deploy a WRAP 1-1 embedded wireless router three years ago and has been running with good success ever since that time. See: old set-up

Click here for high res image (818 KB)

During the last few years we have been upgrading backbones on the core network to 802.11a with great success and after some planning the equipment was put together for an upgrade on this site funded by Air-Stream Wireless members. As seen in the stitched image above the site has good LOS from the North West around to the North East of Adelaide CBD. Access is possible from the ground along North Terrace, Adelaide Uni, the SA Museum and surrounding public areas.

The site deploys two WRAP 2 board (128MB) seen above which have been housed in customised metal water-proof enclosures. The larger enclosure includes a 5 port 100base switch which has been modified with a switch mode regulator to down-convert the 18V DC injected over the Ethernet cable from the basement some 60 metres below.

Due to the long cable run there is a 2V drop and now there are two routers we have upgraded the POE system to a 18 Volt DC 120Watt power supply. The system is short circuit protected and incorporates a LPT control PCB to allow a power cycled of the WRAP units above via the Internet or from the alternate router, if in the rare case of system lock-up.

Note: The waveguide above has been replaced with a 8dbi Superpass Omni

The site now provides not only better coverage because of high speed backbones to Highgate Park and Walkerville but also deploys two high power APs with better driver support under Air-Stream's customized router OS.

Access Point:
North Sector Horizontal Polarization - ssid: Air-Stream-APANA-H
Omni Vertical Polarisation - ssid: Air-Stream-APANA-V

Backbones:
Air-Stream-Walkerville - 5.8Ghz
Air-Stream-Julia-Farr - 5.8Ghz
Air-Stream-Ridleyton
Air-Stream-Woodville-West

North Terrace APANA

This Access Point is located on North Terrace in Adelaide CBD, the image below is a line of site 150 Degrees from North West to North East.

The site was made possible by the Australian Public Access Network Association Inc. a non-profit organisation for individuals who are interested in learning computer networking skills in a friendly hobby environment. http://adelaide.apana.org.au/ or via radio

APANA is located in the Basement of the Building 60 metre below where our Air-Stream router equipment is installed. A low voltage isolated 20VAC 20W supply is feed over an ethernet cable providing good safety. While ensuring suitable power is available to both supply telemetry and UPS systems. An ethernet connection is also available and provides a direct connection between the Air-Stream Network and APANA.

The Router is designed around the SMC 260Mhz embedded CPU PCB, with onboard Flash Card more details at http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap.htm . Which offers spaces for two mini pci slots where I have installed two senao Prims2 100mW cards, leaving two ethernet ports for a Backbone AP and the APANA connction.

This small and low power unit has allowed the installation of both the main board and the UPS system inside a waterproof housing. Creating an opportunity to place the equipment directly where the Antennas are, reducing the amount of cabling and improving signal performance as short coax runs can be deployed.

The Senao 100mW cards run in AP mode under Open BSD and are used for the main Access Points at the site.

The image on the left is the Router and two wave guides. One faces North West the other North East, providing full coverage to the North. The image just to the right is the main backbone. The Dish is 25db and is pointed south to Julia Farr. The backbone uses a Minitar AP in client mode and is connected to the router via an POE cable.

Air-Stream-Athelstone (mk I)

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.

Air-Stream-Pasadena

Pasadena will be having its first major upgrade in a series of stages which will increase the performance of the access point.

In the first stage the old router will be replaced. This it self should stop the unexpected downtimes.

Installed will be:

2 x Senao MiniPCI cards
- One for the Ottoway backbone

- One for the omni for clients to connect to.

2 x Mini-PCI 802.11a/b/g wireless card
- One for Melrose backbone
- One for Julia Farr backbone.

In the future this will allow a 802.11a wireless link.

This will be housed in a mini-PCI cradle

The benefits are:
New router
No more crashing of the router and hardware conflicts (time will tell ;).

802.11a ready
Once Julia Farr is 802.11a ready all that is needed is to change the antennas and set the mini PCI to use the 802.11a standard.

Increased throughputs
802.11a is faster and doesn’t overlap each other. Also 802.11b will be freed up.

Air-Stream-Ridleyton

Ridleyton is a core access point of the Air-Stream network with a backbone to Ottoway. over the years it has had many connections to other places.

The worst thing thats ever happened to Air-Stream was when the pole, antennas, and access points were stolen from the roof of the site in mid 2005. Within a few months the site had been restored thanks to the generosity of members to get this up and running as quick as possible.

For information on connecting to this access point please contact the Committee

Images

Images by Didz

This is the Router.

Constant cool air flow passes though the plant room, the router has no heat problems.

Above is the mast.

13-09-2003

13/09/03

In this upgrade a link to Carrick Hill was made.

Quoted by Sebby from http://www.sebbynet.net/wan/news/archive.htm

I had a quick visit at the end of today to see how the installation of the 6m mast at Air-Stream-Ridleyton Node had progressed. The guys were finishing off attaching a parabolic antenna and raising the mast when I arrived.

23-08-2003

23/08/03
This was the very fisrt installation of ridleyton

Quoted by Sebby from http://www.sebbynet.net/wan/news/archive.htm

Today I had the opportunity to meet up with some of the South Australian Air-Stream wireless members to work on the Air-Stream-Ridleyton Node. I provided some wireless gear (Orinoco PCMCIA card, connectors, pigtail, etc...) which was required to mount a second parabolic antenna at Air-Stream-Ridleyton Node which was planed to be used as a second backbone link to the Air-Stream-Skye Node. It was great to finally meet up and have a good look at the workings of another node. Unfortunately the weather was appalling throughout the day and hampered our efforts, hence the job remained uncompleted and left the Air-Stream-Ridleyton Node off-line

Images by Sebby

4-12-2005

Information

During this day a second mast was installed with a Hills 25db dish to link to Ottoway, The original pole and Hills 25db dish was aligned link to APANA NW. While aligned correctly the dish can pick up Air-Stream-Glen-Osmond slightly better.

The buildings next door had been pulled down so this gave a rare opportunity to have a view of areas never seen beofre from the Ridleyton site.

Stumber Logs

Ridleyton stumbler logs 4-12-05.rar

All scans were done with a Senao 802.11b 200mw PCMICA wireless card provided by Didz.

5 files are included:
20051204141516 Ridleyton 19db pacmon 360 V.ns1
20051204142316 Ridleyton 19db pacmon 360 H.ns1
20051204145939 Ridleyton omni V.ns1
20051204151839 Ridleyton align to Ottoway H.ns1
20051204154748 Ridleyton align to APANA NW and Glen Osmond H.ns1

Images

Getting ready to install the second mast.

Robert mounting the Hills 25db dish.

Attached guy wires and tightning everything up.

The team who made this day possible; Betsuin, Didz, Sam S, Robert and Samiam.

10.121.0.0/27 AP Range

10.104.0.0/27 Client subnet
10.104.2.32/27 Client subnet
10.104.0.32/27 Client subnet
10.104.0.224/28 Client subnet

10.125.0.8/30 Ottoway Backbone
10.125.128.24/30 APANA Backbone

Southern WiFi Network

Southern Wifi is no longer operating

Air-Stream Wireless and Southern WiFi are two community wireless groups in South Australia who have been working to promote the potential of Community Wireless Networks for over six years.

Recently these networks expanded with a successful link over O’Halloran Hill allowing the two networks to join. Together they now form the largest non-profit community owned and operated network in Australia. The network now spans 60kms from Noarlunga to Angle Vale in the north and across this area are numerous Access Points providing coverage over hundreds of square kilometres.

Community Wireless Networks have become more than just a hobby lead interest group they are apart of a world wide phenomena of Open Access Networks in thousands of local settings around the world.

They are groups of community minded individuals who are using the power of wireless in combination with free and open source software (FOSS) to deploy broadband network technologies that facilitates community participation, local content and communications.

If a hand full of people can build and maintain a broadband network that covers many hundreds of square kilometres how much more could it achieve with broader community involvement and support from public and private organisations.

South West Upgrade Plans - 2008

Current plans for upgrades in the South and Western Suburbs over the next two months for 2008 are as follows. In the map to the right, the orange lines indicate upgraded or new backbones and yellow circles indicate new or upgraded APs with improved coverage.

• New Router Node at Fulham Gardens
• Two new AP and antenna upgrades at Carrick Hill (better LOS)
• New Skye to Highgate 802.11a Backbone replacing APANA
• New Highgate to Fulham Gardens 802.11a Backbone
• Upgraded Highgate to VK5TTY (OHalloran Hill) 802.11a Backbone
• New Fulham Gardens to VK5TTY (OHalloran Hill) 802.11a Backbone
• New Fulham Gardens to Seaton 802.11b backbone
• New Melrose Park to Carrick Hill 802.11b backbone
• New Superpass Omin at Melrose Park
• Two new AP upgrades at Highgate Park East and West
• New Superpass Omin at VK5TTY (OHalloran Hill)

Stage 1 - Complete

Stage 1 of the Go West plan is complete in preparation for the new site at Fulhum Gardens and the new upgrade at Carrick Hill.

Consequently Highgate Park was upgraded to support two new backbones, one to link to the new site at Fulhum Gardens and the other for the Carrick Hill.

This has meant that the old Senao APs where removed and replaced with a shiny new 500Mhz PC Engines Alix Board.

Also the West waveguide was also taken down and replaced with 5.8Ghz dish which was aligned to Fulham Gardens.

Stage 2 - Complete

Stage 2 of the Go West plan is complete in preparation for the new sites in the west and the and upgrade at Melrose Park.

For Hi-Res 180 LOS Image 902.28 KB Click Here...

Great care has been taken to ensure this installation has minimum visual impact to this important heritage building.

The new upgrade has given new life into the Carrick Hill site, by not only offering better LOS for the Antennas as seen above, but also new equipment.

The older equipment was removed, which comprised of 500Mhz VIA Router, Minitar APs and some high gain slotted waveguides.

This was all replaced with a new PoE system including the FreeBSD latest Air-Stream Router System, Atheros based wireless cards and supported on the newest 500Mhz PC Engines Alix Boards. Along with the high performance Superpass antennas located with better LOS

This installation was made possible through the generosity of the Management of Carrick Hill for providing the site and power for this project and the members of Air-Steam who have given their time and commitment.

Stage 3 - Complete

An upgrade was successfully completed at Melrose Park on Sunday 2nd March 2008. The upgrade includes a new Omni antenna and the addition of a dedicated backbone to Carrick Hill. The upgrade will improve redundancy for Melrose Park, Carrick Hill and Pasadena, further improving access to the network in the area. Many thanks to Jeremy and Chris for the help.

Stage 4 - Fulham Gardens

Stage 4 of the "Go West Plan" has begun with work completed on the new Fulham Gardens site. This will not only help strengthen coverage across the Western Suburbs, but this and other sites like Torrensville, will help increase bandwidth and redundancy to the establishment of even more new sites in the West. More information soon...

Air-Stream-Carrick-Hill Lives

Carrick Hill is one of Adelaide's most famous period homes, but what many people are unaware, is it also hosts a Node in one of Australia's largest Community Wireless Networks. With a recent upgrade it now hosts the latest in Community Wireless technology and the end result is unprecedented coverage across the South Western suburbs of Adelaide, while at the same time having no visual impact on this beautiful heritage building. More about the upgrade

EARC

The Elizabeth Amateur Radio Club (EARC) call sign VK5LZ has there main repeater and club located at a Water Tower in Elizabeth. Work has now begun to help the club to install a Router and three 802.11b APs with Waveguides to the North, East and South. It is is also hoped to established high speed 802.11a Backbones to Northfeild, Uleybury and Para Hills.

See Club Details: Elizabeth Amateur Radio Club

The Mawson Centre

Approval has been granted, and plans are now underway to install a new Air-Stream node in the Mawson Lakes area. This has been made possible through the generosity and support of UniSA and The Mawson Centre.

The Mawson Centre will become a core Air-Stream Node and will not only increase our networks capacity but also offer a great opportunity to demonstrate new systems providing easy access to local information and tools that allow anyone in and around the area to create temporary and permanent communities in the public spaces.

Air-Stream Melrose Update - 6/1/2006

The Melrose Router was upgraded today with the new Troy OpenBSD router distro and the Omni 200mW Senao dual cards where replaced with a new 400mW SR2 Card.

It apears that the router started having issues with four interfaces when the new backbone to Ben was added causing a buffer overflow issues on the motherboard and by replacing the dual cards with one PCI card for the SR2 the site seems to be running at optimum levels again.

However this means the spare sector AP is no-longer available to the West, fortunatlly there has not been domand for this AP to-date.

Last Weekend the dish to Pasadena was re-align and is currently passing obout 28Mbps.

Mt Barker Update

Movement is a foot in the Mt Barker region with a new run of activity. Due to some equipment becoming available after a number of successful upgrades in the metropolitan network and so surplus equipment has been made available to the Mt Barker team to help give their project boost along. Hopefully over the coming weeks we should see a few Air-Stream SSIDs popping up around Mt Barker area, and if you would like to help please contact Kim Hawtin (adhoc) to be apart of this exciting Community Wireless Network initiative.

Mt Barkers First Node

Plans are afoot to start building an community wireless network from scratch across the Mt Barker area beginning with a free community hotspot located near the town’s center sponsored by Darren Roebuck of Adelaide Hills Electronics.

Currently, members are needed to volunteer their time to help get this exciting new project off to a good start and it is hoped you will offer some good advice, ideas and discussion on how to both drum up local support and ways to expand the network.

Although, it may be impractical to link the network back to the larger metropolitan network in the short/medium-term, it does offer an excellent opportunity to develop a working model of community wireless networks in small communities.

Skye 3 Installation

Skye 3 Mast

Measure and cut galvinized tubing and angles.

Mark out holes and where tubing will be welded

Drilll and linish off burs

Mig-Weld tubbing to angles

Hammer in end caps into unused tube openings

Although these end caps are not required it looks allot nicer

Finish mast brackets, the welds and makes will be painted with zinc paint, to prevent rust.

Each mast pole will be attached to the wall by two of these brackets

How they may look when attached to a wall.

OHalloran Hill Installation - Stage 1

Due to access restrictions at TAFE SA this was the first time we have actually been on-site to see where the equipment would be installed. Nevertheless a good result given the limited time we had and everything was done without any real measurements.

The main mast could not be taken down as planed as all the guy-wire turnbuckles where corroded and consequently run a high risk of damage if they where removed.

More time will be planned to replace these and over-haul of the mast. Consequently as the mast could not be lower the waveguides where placed at ladder height 5 metres up the mast as a temporary measure seen here. Nevertheless this is offering time to review and test the current setup and explore new backhaul nodes in the network.

Unfortunately we identified a few LOS issues with a group of trees which block the North East and so there is a real need to raise the waveguides if the Highgate Park link is to be improved. A link is established, which is poor and although this maybe improved with a larger dish at Highgate Park, it would seem that other backhaul nodes need to be identified.

Nevertheless there are very good views from the South East around the South West and some good connectivity for the Southern Suburbs should be a breeze.

There was some views to the North towards the Western suburbs of Adelaide just standing on the roof of the building. Consequently it looks like it will be quite feasible to install fixed dishes at ladder height to establish 802.11a links to the South and Wester suburbs of Adelaide at a latter stage once these backhaul nodes are finalised. The current setup should make this easy as it will allow site surveys from a number of locations possible.

10 metres below the router is installed on the top shelf along slide the South Coast Amateur Radio Club Inc packet radio equipment and server. The rack is well ventilated, with UPS and allows for upgrades of wireless nics at a latter stage.

I would really like to thank the many people who through their patience and support have made this project possible.

We would particularly like to thank everyone the South Coast Amateur Radio Club Inc who have made this project possible and for hosting the site at the TAFE.

Aslo special thanks to:
Paul Hofman, for climbing the mast and taking the brunt of our childish jokes.
Chris F. for donating two wave guides to Air-Stream
Dior (Didz) for donating a PC to Air-Stream used as the server
Chris (drgeforce3) for creating an image and configuring AS Router OS for O'Halloran Hill
Troy (hat) for developing the AS Router OS, helping out on-sit and finalizing configurations.

SPLAT! - Line of sight (LOS) O’Halloran Hill

SPLAT! is an RF Signal Propagation, Loss, And Terrain analysis tool for the spectrum between 20 MHz and 20 GHz. It provides site engineering data such as the great circle distances and bearings between sites, antenna elevation angles (uptilt), depression angles (downtilt), antenna height above mean sea level, antenna height above average terrain, bearings and distances to known obstructions, path loss based on the Longley-Rice Irregular Terrain Model, and minimum antenna height requirements needed to establish line-of-sight communication paths absent of obstructions due to terrain.

Below is the predicted LOS for OHalloran Hill, it assumes both up and down tilt and no signal path loss, only path obstruction.

Below is the predicted signal path losses between OHalloran Hill and Highgate Park (Julia Farr)

The Antennas at O'Halloran Hill and constuction of brakets

The Mast where the wave guides are to be mounted

Thinking and working out how to make brakets.

Trying to see how it might look and finalise design.

Measuring it all out

Cutting up the components

Working out what kind of down tilt is required

Marking out mounting holes

Drilled holes in the components

Measuring out how to weld components

Welded components

Checking final welds and making adjustments

Rust proofing and painting braket

Backet attached to Wave Guide

Finished Bracket and Wave Guide side view

Finished Bracket and Wave Guide top view

Signal pattern from Wave Guide and why a down tilt is required in high locations, like O'Halloran Hill.

Although the Horizontal pattern is quite wide the Vertical pattern makes the signal quite flat and without a slight down tilt almost half of the radio energy may pass over the top of most users.