- PSDR - mailman.hamwan.org

WiFi channels
by Rob Martin 21 Feb '21

21 Feb '21

This might be considered slightly off-topic, at least until you have read it. My computer is an older Lenovo Thinkpad X201 laptop, and is running Windows 10 Pro. I suspect my issue applies to any OS. With an Amateur Radio licence we can use WiFi channels outside the range available to Part 15 users. Q1. Where in the pc is the range of available 5GHz WiFi channels set? The highest channel that works in my machine is number 165, centred at 5825MHz, 20MHz wide. It will NOT work on the next channel up (number 169, 5845MHz centre, 20MHz wide) Q2. How do applications read this information? A program I use called InSSIDer that displays WiFi activity shows channel 165 as the highest available. How does it know? Q3. Is there a tool with which I can read this information? Q4. Is there a way I can edit this information to extend the range to higher channels? Thanks. RobK7QJ

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BawFaw is back online
by Bart Kus 20 Feb '21

20 Feb '21

Dale & I went up to BawFaw today to assess the outage situation today. Due to a cable failure at CapitolPeak, BawFaw was running on its backup link via Larch Mtn. Then, this path failed too. Here's the culprit: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZBKyrkJRA5sJdTVr7 That's the result of water getting into the cable (jacket penetration), and then running down to the RJ45 PoE injection point. With those contacts submerged and 24V present, the copper begins electrolysis. This ruins both the cable end, and the PoE injector. Luckily, I brought spare injectors, and my crimping kit. Two injectors were swapped out, and this Larch RJ45 was re-terminated. Water started dripping out of it immediately though! To combat the outdoor jacket breach, I installed "drip loops" at the bottom of the cabinet for every one of the CAT5 cables coming in. You can see the Larch cable drip loop here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/exgP2ozmKJuppsTq7 Notice the puddle already forming! The ground wire keeps the shield integrity from end to end. I think the cause of the outdoor CAT5 jacket destruction may have been improper installation. The lowest 10-20ft of cable didn't have any cushions, and were swaying pretty significantly in the wind, hitting metal edges. Dale remedied this situation a little bit by sticking the HamWAN cable bundle into some free space of another tenant's cable hanger. We didn't bring cable cushion hardware and weren't planning on climbing the tower, so that's all that could be done. BawFaw should stay online for a little longer now, until we can properly address the cable system. --Bart

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Bawfaw hamwan & DMR question
by Paul Barwick 18 Feb '21

18 Feb '21

For at least the past couple of days the Bawfaw DMR repeater seems to be isolated from the Internet. I am wondering if that repeater uses the hamwan node up there, and if so, if that node is down? That's just a guess on my part. What I know about both Hamwan and DMR is almost non existent Paul, KE7PCB

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VOTE: New cabling evaluation samples
by Bart Kus 07 Feb '21

07 Feb '21

Hello, As a follow-up to the "Capitol Peak cable system failure" email, here are the samples I would like to order and evaluate for use in all our future deploys: Item Description Qty Cost Total Water blocking CAT6 cable, 1000ft <https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6-direct-burial-ethernet-cable-shield…> 1 $199.99 $199.99 Water blocking CAT5e cable, 1000ft <https://www.truecable.com/products/cat5e-direct-burial-ethernet-cable-shiel…> 1 $158.99 $158.99 BCU158M7 Multi-Hole Universal Barrel Cushion <https://www.sitepro1.com/store/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=5661> 1 $42.50 $42.50 TOTAL, excluding tax and shipping $401.48 I know 500ft spools of the cables are available, but the $/ft there is much worse, and whichever spool we choose will be deployed in the field. The other spool can be used up for indoor wiring, from surge arresters onwards. --Bart

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Capitol Peak cable system failure
by Bart Kus 07 Feb '21

07 Feb '21

Hello, I recently noticed we had multiple modems offline at Capitol Peak. Dale & I went to visit Capitol Peak a few days ago to inspect the situation. This is what we found: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KXajGkDGLsW41dQz7 It's a little hard to see in the photos, but our cable bus has been ripped off the tower. When examining the cabinet where the cables terminate, I found the cables to be wet, and we discovered water pooling in the bottom of the cabinet: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kWwAWs2FvA6ghhC28 So not only are the cables dangling, they're also broken to the point where we lost communications and are now taking on water. This was likely caused by ice falling onto the cables, since that bottom bundle was mounted in such a way that it was protruding inside the tower, instead of being under the cover of angle iron like the rest of the horizontal coax nearby. It's hard to pin down exactly when this happened, but the data I've seen points to Jan 23rd for S3 falling offline. There is another cable of ours that had its support removed about 80ft up the tower. It feeds the BawFaw link. The damage was again along a horizontal run, from the cable ladder to the dish on the opposite side of the tower from the cable ladder. We typically run these under the steel members, so I'm not sure what the failure there was. I wasn't able to take good pictures of the dangling cable. The whole bottom bundle is impacting on the edge of angle iron whenever the wind blows. This has likely cut through the cables, although poor weather didn't allow close visual inspection. I think this situation calls for some engineering changes in addressing this and other future deploys: 1) All horizontal runs must be protected from falling ice, by having steel members above them. 2) We should evaluate the use of tougher cable that is more resistant to physical damage. 3) We should evaluate the use of cable that is water-resistant when it does get breached. 4) We should evaluate the use of drip-loops (removing a section of jacket) before the cable reaches expensive equipment. 5) We should measure the forces required to remove beam clamps and establish minimum torque requirements. 6) A camera system may have spotted these cable failures before we experienced communication outages. Deployment has been approved. There is some good info on addressing (3) on this page, thanks to Dale's research: https://www.truecable.com/blogs/cable-academy/into-the-great-outdoors-runni… To address (2) I think we can look at stepping up to CAT6, which is AWG23 instead of AWG24, and has a larger outer diameter. The presence of a spline will also make the cable stronger. This leaves us with a cushion problem, since our cushions are only designed for 1/4" cable and CAT6 is thicker than that. It seems we have gotten exceedingly lucky here! Valmont has just recently released a new cushion design that accepts 7 runs of 4mm-9mm cable! The part # is BCU158M7. We also need to make sure these new cable selections will be compatible with our current-spec EZ-RJ45 ends. I'm going to send a separate VOTE email to approve the purchasing of samples of this new hardware, so I can verify it will all work together. Let's use this thread to discuss the problems, and if anyone has other/better solutions please share here. --Bart

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VOTE: Power backup expansion project
by Bart Kus 07 Feb '21

07 Feb '21

Hello, During the recent wind storm event in January, HamWAN lost utility power to some sites. This triggered network outages that affected users and repeaters that relied on those sites. It was far from our finest hour. "When all else fails", HamWAN should not be the first in line. I'd like for 2021 to be a year we focus on reliability. Having a reliable power system at every site seems like a good place to start that journey. In each of the power failures in January, a generator system failed to activate. In these cases, we need at least 24 hours to mount a response in fixing generators. This means our battery backup systems should be sized for at least 24 hours of runtime. I have acquired a couple UPSes that can achieve this. They are composed of the main UPS: https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-XL-Modular-3000VA-120… And one external (and chainable!) battery expansion module: https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-XL-Modular-48V-Extend… They also feature an AP9631 network interface module in each UPS, so we can monitor and control the power system. As you can see, each UPS costs about $3600 new, so the two I acquired would be $7,200 new. However, I managed to find used units and purchased brand new batteries for them. *The total cost for these two systems is $963.71.* One of them is deployed at Rattlesnake ("Snoqualmie shack") already: https://photos.app.goo.gl/HTomAzJUnrjuJ3bw8 If we ever want to expand the battery capacity of these, we can simply plug in more battery modules. I'm hoping to deploy the 2nd system in the other building on Rattlesnake ("DNR shack"), but that hasn't happened yet. --Bart

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Baldi probably going dark soon
by Bart Kus 13 Jan '21

13 Jan '21

Just a heads up, Baldi lost power around midnight, presumably due to the wind storm. The new generator failed to start. We've been on batteries all day, and looks like we're due to run out in about 2 hours. The 3 buildings north of the big one should be on their own generator, which is hopefully working, and HamWAN should continue to provide network service for the linked repeaters there, via the Rattlesnake microwave path. --Bart

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BLYN connection
by Ken Koster 11 Jan '21

11 Jan '21

Just how is Blyn connected into HamWAN? The website map doesn't show it and I don't see any graphs at monitoring.hamwan.net that seem to point to it either. The reason I'm curious is there was an outage from 8AM to 3PM on the 5th. The 224.10 repeater was working fine but lost it's link to everything else. Pings and traceroutes all failed and not knowing how Blyn is linked limited my ability to troubleshoot. Not a big problem but I need my itch of curiosity scratched. -- Ken - N7IPB Email: n7ipb(a)wetnet.net JID: n7ipb(a)jabber.wetnet.net SvxLink Repeaters: http://pnw220.wetnet.net PGP Sig: F42B EF90 3CD3 31C7 3056 122E 993A 7B2E 5138 C42A If you think you are too small to make a difference. Try sleeping with a mosquito. - Dalai Lama

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Free stuff!
by Bart Kus 10 Jan '21

10 Jan '21

Hello, I'm doing some "spring" cleaning. I have a few nerdy items to give away. If you feel like you can put these to good use, please email me. HP 8660C 1-2600MHz signal generator: https://photos.app.goo.gl/L7mLbXpdoHujsxfx9 Also comes with a phase modulator module. HP 8757A scalar network analyzer. Needs some TLC. Comes with the missing face plate piece (sitting on top of it). Also comes with a 26GHz power sensor. https://photos.app.goo.gl/krmwxzFK1uxxp2L7A Tote of misc stuff I decided I won't be using: https://photos.app.goo.gl/h5HJXE1x1fsasWRh8 You even get to keep the tote! Odetics 325 rubidium atomic clock with GPS antenna: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aZSArgsWeKkHNkq39 Comes with a spare clock board or something, I dunno, haven't checked. Items are all located in Monroe. Would love to see them disappear today. --Bart

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Routing Level redundancy/Technical Questions for PSDR ECMP/PBR Design
by Brent 16 Dec '20

16 Dec '20

Hello All, I am contemplating a PSDR Dual/Triple Connection but I am wondering if what I would like to do would be supported. I am currently in a coverage area of 3 different Hub Sites (Baldi (-72db),Gold(-76db),Capital(-89db)) and I am wondering if the existing deployment with routed back-haul style links could be established and supported based on metrics or PBR. I would be running 2 (possibly 3) separate Radios with separate routes for a traditional PTP Link design. Brent Roberts KI7WIR

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