Hey all.
I just got my tech license and call sign a few hours ago and I have completed the process of configuring a 5ghz Nanostation node in Redondo Beach. I have line of sight to Mt. Wilson while on the roof deck, but am not able to get any sort of signal. Although, it is probably stretching it with the distance.
I am configured for trying channel 174, 10mhz, as I think I read someplace that my node has to be configured to the same Channel / Bandwidth pair for the Wifi Scan to work. Is that the correct channel / bandwidth pair?
Also, I might have the opportunity to set up a node in Palo Verdes Estates which if I could secure the locaiton would provide a massive amount of additional coverage. Not sure who I should be talk to about coordinating that kind of effort.
73,
Ray
I just got my tech license and call sign a few hours ago and I have completed the process of configuring a 5ghz Nanostation node in Redondo Beach. I have line of sight to Mt. Wilson while on the roof deck, but am not able to get any sort of signal. Although, it is probably stretching it with the distance.
I am configured for trying channel 174, 10mhz, as I think I read someplace that my node has to be configured to the same Channel / Bandwidth pair for the Wifi Scan to work. Is that the correct channel / bandwidth pair?
Also, I might have the opportunity to set up a node in Palo Verdes Estates which if I could secure the locaiton would provide a massive amount of additional coverage. Not sure who I should be talk to about coordinating that kind of effort.
73,
Ray
I'll defer to Orv W6BI on the Mt Wilson node settings. There was some local interference issues being worked though. But yes, a NS at that distance isn't going to have enough gain to have a usable link regardless. Yes, a "wifi scan" only shows 802.11 signals on the same channel width.
PV is a strategic location, not yet reached. If there is a private or other location you have access to, please separately contact me. There are others in SoCal that would be willing to join up with investment to extend a backbone to this location if possibilities for sector coverage to the local area. Also, maybe out to Catalina at some point.
Joe AE6XE
Hi Ray,
I hope you have not given up on this. There are 4 of us hams in the South Bay trying to get going on the AREDN network.
I have a weak connection to Mt Wison now with a borrowed Ubiquity M5-300a Nanobeam. I have a 30 inch dish on order to hopefully improve my link.
Also Pete, AI6HJ in Torrance has a link to Mt Wilson. AB6UI (Torrance) and K6UU (Redondo) are also trying to get the (5GHz) network working in our area. We have not been able to link up locally yet. So look us up on QRZ and send us an email or try here to contact us. We are also often found on the W6HA repeater.
You may be able to help us get the network working.
Thanks! ron AG6ST
I had not been keeping up recently because I moved from Redondo to Long Beach. I looked at the map today and saw all those nodes in the South Bay. WOW! Glad you could connect. I am connected to Mt. Wilson SE right now, sort of. I have a theory that the antenna that is up there might be blowing around because I get wild +-10db swings on the SE sector antenna. I'm at 24db right now, but will probably drop down to 10-14 in a minute.
What we need to do is get a 3ghz from Mt Wilson to someplaces in Palos Verdes. PV would provide amazing coverage for most of Southern Los Angeles, and is equidistant between all three major backbones. (Mt. Wilson, Pleasants Peak, and Verdugo). I tried to start making some contacts up there, but wasn't very successful in getting a location secured.
I am currently on the 9th floor of a condo building facing toward Carson / Torrance / Rendondo Beach. I think Redondo Beach is blocked for me, but if you are ever able to see downtown long beach odds are you would be able to hit my node.
73
Ray
Ron, your node, AG6ST-1, on the wrong channel , as 177 is the southeast facing node, switch to 174. Also, given your distance you do want to think about a high gain antenna like a Mikrotik LHG5 XL or better.
It is always a good idea to check channel assignments on the live map:
https://mapping.kg6wxc.net/meshmap/map_display.php#16/33.8314/-118.3576
Also, consider building a local high-quality network, which then connects to Wilson. I quote:
- Remember that a multi-hop path through the network must have good signal quality on each leg of the journey. You cannot expect adequate performance through a series of poor quality links. For example, if you traverse three links having LQ metrics of 65%, 45%, and 58%, your aggregate LQ will be 17% which is unusable. The aggregate LQ should be at least 50% to have a usable path.
from https://arednmesh.readthedocs.io/en/latest/arednNetworkDesign/channel_pl...Hope this helps.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Hi Oliver,
Ch 174 is 10 dB weaker than 177 here, on the WiFi scan. Has always seemed to be that way. Maybe a local null thing.
I'm going to get set up so that I can aim the antenna real time while on the laptop, while up on the roof, maybe today or tomorrow.
AB6UI has a POE battery thing I'm going to borrow. I'll try both freqs.
ron...
We have also noticed that 177 was visible when we hiked nodes up to Griffith Park. The LQ on 177 was fine, but the NLQ was always terrible. On 174 we had good LQ and NLQ.
Please let us know about your test results, that information is extremely valuable.
Good luck!
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Hi Oliver,
Today, I put up the 30 inch Winegard 30 inch dish ($55 ebay) with the Mikrotik LDF5 on a 4 foot fiberglass mil surplus pole on a vent pipe (about 20 feet above ground level). I put the mount pipe to the pole on upside down, so that it would aim at the horizon. Worked great. A nice neat easy install. It is working wonders over the Ubiquity M5-300a. I'm getting snr of 50 dB and 100% LQ and NLQ (60 to 70 mbps to ch 174 now) even with the power a couple of dB below max. I was barely able to connect with the M5 at about 11-14 dB snr with lots of aiming time. I have not tried aiming the big dish other than roughly, but I must be pretty close. It came right up. The realtime OC map has not updated yet after a couple of hours. I'm not seeing ch 177 on the big dish, not sure why.
Anyway, looking good so far!
thanks,
ron...
AG6ST
That is fantastic news! Welcome to the Mesh! And thank you for sharing your update, we will pass it on to David and Darren, too. They will be thrilled to hear about the impact their work and the reach their equipment has.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
I made a large error in my previous posting. The 30 inch Wingard dish did not perform nearly as well as I reported earlier I had misunderstood the connection data because I had both the Ubiquity and the Mikrotik runniing at the same time on the same channel. The Mikrotik with the 30" dish actually is performing about the same as the Ubiquity M5-300A. I still need to do more work figuring out how to aim the thing, so I may post more in the future about it.
ron...
Hi Ron,
No worries, that happens, and frankly I do not think that the error is "large", quite the contrary.
As Gary W6GSW points out your node experiences only 5.6% Packet loss to and from Wilson.
6. K6ECG-LA-MtWilson-SW.local.mesh 0.3% 5096 22.3 84.0 7.2 1771. 82.0
7. AG6ST-1.local.mesh 5.6% 5096 822.8 1014. 9.9 9168. 897.7
With a little tweaking you can improve that, as you have already pointed out. We all look forward to your results!
By the way, David KK6DA mentioned during our roundtable last Thursday night that he was thrilled to see you guys come online and working towards strong, stable connections.
Very cool!
Please keep us in the loop about your experiences!
73,
Oliver K6OLI
Best regards
SM6LNJ Peter
Hi Peter,
Please refer to the Supported Platform Matrix here
https://www.arednmesh.org/content/supported-platform-matrix
From that it does not look that the PB 5AC Gen2 is compatible with AREDN. However, you can still use it for regular point-to-point IP traffic and experimentation, just using the original firmware.
Pretty much everything we do with AREDN works the same with Part 15 devices, as they are sometimes referred to in the US, the restriction is the number of clients is usually a maximum of 253, unless you put in a more professional architecture.
For our workshops I often employ an unflashed Part 15 travel router to train people how to use Winlink P2P, Linphone and video streams, for example. The difference is only that people operate in the 192.168.x.x class of IP rather than 10.x.x.x, so everyone can participate and learn and then transfer the skills over to the AREDN world.
Hope that helps.
73,
Oliver K6OLI
The higher-gain dish makes all the difference. It looks like you now have a good link with the southwest 5 GHz sector.
The link does sometimes exhibit long ping times and experience periodic bursts of packet loss. You may be able to tweak the alignment and improve things.
My traceroute [v0.87] (0.0.0.0) Thu Feb 28 14:30:05 2019 Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit Packets Pings Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev 1. localnode.local.mesh 0.0% 5097 0.4 0.4 0.3 9.9 0.6 2. dtdlink.W6GSW-NBM3-14-231-218.lo 0.1% 5097 0.6 0.6 0.5 17.0 0.7 3. W6JPL-RM3-PleasantsPk-p2p-JPL.lo 0.1% 5097 2.9 8.2 2.7 229.1 17.1 4. KA6ECT-RM3-Pleasants-36-198-231. 0.1% 5097 6.0 15.1 5.8 514.1 21.7 5. dtdlink.KA6ECT-NBM5-Wilson-62-17 0.2% 5096 6.0 16.1 5.8 486.5 22.9 6. K6ECG-LA-MtWilson-SW.local.mesh 0.3% 5096 22.3 84.0 7.2 1771. 82.0 7. AG6ST-1.local.mesh 5.6% 5096 822.8 1014. 9.9 9168. 897.7There are two long 3 GHz links in the path, plus the 5 GHz link from Wilson to you.
You, and everyone else, are invited to participate at our monthly Activity Days, held the fourth Saturday of each month at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. While not exclusively mesh-related, we spend quite a bit of time discussing it. Plus digital and other Amateur Radio and emcomm topics.
Its a bit of a trek from the South Bay, but its a good opportunity to meet other local mesh participants.
73.
de Gary W6GSW
KA6ECT Trustee
Los Angeles Emergency Communications Team
Pasadena-San Gabriel Valley Emcomm Mesh
Andre, K6AH
thanks for looking at this. No, the rocket dish to wilson is a 5 ghz link, the nanostation is a 2ghz machine. when i dtd the 2 ghz machine, the etx on the 5 ghz path to wilson degrades. both nodes are running nightly builds. I disconnected the 2 ghz node after that, but can reconnect it if you can troubleshoot remotely. Sounds like this might get involved though, I'll try to email you directly via your profile. Thanks again!
Well, after a few days of being connected my LQ to the SE Sector Mt. Wilson antenna has not gone above 4%, despite having 24db and 65% NLQ. Not sure what happened, I haven't adjusted anything on my end as far as I am aware. Perhaps the cloud cover is impacting it, but it seems like there is another issue.
update: moved the antenna slightly, went from 22db to 16db, but was able to get OSLR entries. Perhaps the 22db was a signal bounce? Unfortunately, within about 4 minutes the LQ dropped back down to almost 0. Really strange.
The Wilson 5 GHz sector node names refer to their orientation from Wilson. The "southwest" node is on 174 and is nominally pointed at 225 degrees. The "southeast" node is on 177 and is nominally pointed at 135 degrees.
Ray, your node has a low-quality link to the southeast node on 177. I would look for the southwest node on 174, which is pointed more in your direction.
Because the existing direct RF link is marginal, the best path from Wilson to your node routes indirectly through the tunnel connections.
Does anyone have contact info for K6UU? I see he has a node in redondo now.
Hello guys, hope I'm not hijacking this thread... im a mesh noob from south bay as well.
I'm a network engineer (Cisco CCIE R/S) and interested in joining the mesh from Torrance. Trying to get my bearings and decide on what equipment to purchase and the generally the best way to connect to the mesh. For now I'm pouring through the FAQ and information scattered through this site and the forums.
I've checked my address on heywhatsthat and appears I have decent line of sight to Mt. Wilson, from what I read on this thread thats the way to go?
Any feedback or direction would be appreciated. Feel free to contact me direct on my email which is on QRZ.com
Cheers,
Chris - KM6HVO