Link from Port Hueneme to Santa Barbara

34 posts / 0 new

Sat, 05/28/2016 - 00:25

kg6wxc

73 all! I currently have a 2.4GHz link from my home in Port Hueneme all the way up to Gibraltar Peak in Santa Barbara. Using a Rocket M2 and a Rocket Dish, it's a pretty solid link at 33+ miles! It's not very fast all the time, but I have seen it get up to 11Mbps at times. If anyone would like to link up to us, I encourage you to do so. The Santa Barbara Amateur Radio Club has been having A LOT of mesh network activity in the recent months and we'd all love to link up with all of you. Are there any plans for perhaps putting a node on Red Mountain to link the 2 counties together? Thanks and happy meshing! Eric - kg6wxc

Mon, 05/30/2016 - 00:06

w6bi

Backbone links.

Eric, there ARE plans to establish a backbone on 3 GHz from SB county to Ventura County and points east. See KA6SOX for details.
73 - Orv
W6BI

Mon, 05/30/2016 - 15:19

w6bi

More on Ventura County Mesh activity

Eric, there is a mailing list specific to mesh activity in Ventura County. It's moderately active and fairly helpful. Send an email to
vc_hammeshnet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to join.

Other local activity you may not be aware of.
There are two nodes on South Mountain, to the NE of you. They are
WD6EBY-SouthMtn-W-Sector.local.mesh and
WD6EBY-SouthMtn-E-Sector.local.mesh.
WD6EBY-SouthMtn-W-Sector.local.mesh points southwest so you should be able to connect to it easily.
They're both connected to the Ventura County backbone that spans from Sulphur Mountain on the west to Chatsworth Peak on the east.
The nearest meshers to you that I know about are K6NE and WB6MAA, both in Ventura.
They're on the mailing list so when you get on it, announce your presence.
Note: the county standard is ch -2, 10 MHz BW, and ssid of BroadbandHamnet (legacy from earlier days)

73
Orv
W6BI

Mon, 06/06/2016 - 03:43

kg6wxc

I tried to send a mail to the

I tried to send a mail to the vc_hammeshnet group. I got a message back saying I have to be approved. So I went to yahoo groups main page and searched for "vc_hammeshnet" and only found a simi valley group called "simi_valley_hammmeshnet". Unsure how to subscribe to that group. I'll look more later.

I actually spent a lot of yesterday with SOX up on top of Santa Ynez peak, linking Santa Barbara with the Santa Ynez Valley! We put a couple NanoStations up there and they worked wonderfully. One of them is about 30-35 feet up on one of towers, pointing back towards Santa Barbara.

I'll ask him about Red Mountain the next time I talk to him.

I am also seriously considering getting another node to point towards south mountain and *I* can link the 2 counties together for now, well at least when there is not heavy fog. :)
That might have to wait until next month tho.

I am sorry I missed your replies until now.
thanks for the info.

eric - KG6WXC

*edited for some typos*

Mon, 06/06/2016 - 19:25

w6bi

Progress

Glad you're making progress, Eric. What's your email address? I'll forward along some info.

73 - Orv
W6BI

Tue, 06/07/2016 - 16:13

kg6wxc

email is my callsign @gmail.com. I think Joe called you a little bit ago about maybe making a tunnel link. Thanks for any info you can send. 73 -eric

Thu, 06/23/2016 - 22:17

n6tve

Eric, is your node up 24x7? I

Eric, is your node up 24x7? I assume you're on channel -2 if you're connecting to Gibraltar?
Assuming the Bullet M2 I ordered arrives tomorrow I'm hoping I can set it up this week end in the San Marcos pass area @2100' above Santa Barbara/Goleta. Well, if I don't get a sun stroke first, that is...
Is there any other 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz mesh node in Ventura that is pointed west, other than Sulphur Mnt and Chatsworth Pk (neither of which I can see)?

Sat, 07/02/2016 - 23:05

(Reply to #7) #8

kg6wxc

I know this is late, but yes,

I know this is late, but yes, it's up 24/7 and on channel -2. Glad you made it onto the network!

Sun, 07/03/2016 - 03:16

n6tve

Thanks for the confirmation.

Thanks for the confirmation. Right now I don't see your node directly. If I have a moment tomorrow I'll swing the antenna a bit to see what I can see...

Mon, 07/04/2016 - 21:21

(Reply to #9) #10

n6tve

Can't connect

Mhh, I can't connect to your node :-(. My antenna is, I believe, pointed in the right direction but I don't see your station. It did capture a beacon at some point while I was moving it around, but I can't reproduce that. I tried moving the antenna while looking at the live chart, but nothing. Do you see my station from your end at all?

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 03:37

(Reply to #10) #11

kg6wxc

yes

Early in the afternoon on the 4th, I saw you pop up as a neighbor, but you didn't stay long. I already had plans on the 4th, in the evening, to move my antenna about 6 feet to the south, in the hopes I could get around the nearest tree better... So I went up on the roof and moved it. I moved too far at first, about 3 feet was better than 6, as nothing could hear me @ 6ft from where I started, (but I could hear 4 stations at once, including Santa Ynez Peak at one point.) once I got it all settled, you and I had a link for a bit there, but it was not a good one, about .7Mbps at best. That would be a really long distance link if we could get it working well. it's far, far too late to be climbing on the roof anymore, so I'm going to let it sit and see how it is in the morning. There is a lot of smoke in the air tonight and I did not spend a lot of time aiming it very precisely, both of those factors could have something to do with it. but hey! it worked over what? 40-something miles, probably. :)

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 04:09

#12

n6tve

41.4. miles

Ha! 41.4 miles :-). My station says it saw you 1 minute ago. Sounds like with a little better aiming we might be able to dial something in that works, but unlikely to ever work very well. Worth the sport, though! I'll have rig something up so I can be up on the tower, move the antenna, and see the realtime chart all at once... audio would be really nice!
I won't have much time tomorrow (tue), but maybe I'll play wed. Depends also on weather, today all I could see of ventura/oxnard was haze...

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 09:20

(Reply to #12) #13

K6AH

Don't forget to set your

Don't forget to set your distance parameter.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 12:20

(Reply to #13) #14

kg6wxc

yep 41 miles

it *is* amazing that it even can work over those kind of distances... but it seems that since I moved my antenna and can now see your station, my speed has gone into the toilet. I used to get about 5-6Mbps to/from Gibraltar, on average. Now I am seeing about 1Mbps if I'm lucky. I think the distance between us is just simply too far, it does work, but not enough to really use. (I did update my "distance slider" once I saw your station trying to connect to mine, it's set at 43.5 miles right now, and changing it hasn't really helped.) I'm going to try a bit more aiming today, but I think I may end up moving my antenna back to it's original position where it could just barely hear you. in other news, our mesh network will hopefully be getting bigger later this afternoon! :) *edit to add* and Thorsten... reboot your node, you changed it's hostname and the old and the new are both still getting sent out across the mesh.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 12:36

(Reply to #14) #15

kg6wxc

a way to see charts

here's a pretty simple way you can see the charts and stuff while you are up on the tower. connect an old wifi router to your node, there are various ways to do this... I am using an old wifi router as basically a wireless hub. It's not doing any routing, as there's nothing plugged into it's WAN port. There's only 1 cable plugged into one of the LAN ports, make sure you turn off DHCP on the old wifi router if you try this. Then I can connect my phone to that SSID, get up on the roof and aim my antenna while I watch the signal charts via the local nodes webpage on my phone. :) hope that made sense, I'm still low on coffee and slow to boot up this morning. :)

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 13:01

#16

n6tve

-86dB/-95dB

For a little while there I was seeing you with -86dB signal / -95dB noise. Now I lost it again. Maybe you're repointing. I was wondering, interested in trying a 5Mhz channel for a day or two to see whether it makes any difference?

WRT seeing the chart, my problem is not routing. I can access the aredn network easily from anything on my LAN, incl phone (using non-std routing). The problem is hanging off a wooden 4x4 "tower" 10ft above ground, moving the 24" grid with one hand, holding the phone with the other hand, and holding myself with ... :-)

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 13:17

(Reply to #16) #17

kg6wxc

ah, yeah I understand now,

ah, yeah I understand now, the classic "dang, I wish I had one more arm" problem. :) I haven't re-aimed anything yet. We could try 5Mhz, but I still think you and I are just simply too far away from each other to have a usable link. Let me know if you want to try it and I'll change my end.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 14:28

#18

n6tve

ch -2 bw 5Mhz SSID AREDN-5-v3

I was looking at the link running some pings and captured the following:

root@N6TVE-WCC-BM2HP-SE60:~# ping 10.150.7.200
PING 10.150.7.200 (10.150.7.200): 56 data bytes
--- 10.150.7.200 ping statistics ---
95 packets transmitted, 76 packets received, 11 duplicates, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 5.234/2882.453/14871.234 ms

Not usable but "connected"...

I now switched to ch -2 5 Mhz bandwidth, let's see whether that changes anything. Of course it's going to be just the two of us...

I don't think the distance is the issue per-se, I think I'm probably a bit too low on the horizon for you.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 14:31

(Reply to #18) #19

kg6wxc

ok changing mine to see what

ok changing mine to see what happens... if it doesn't get better after an hour or so I'm going to change it back. We're going to be putting up the Mesa Site nodes this afternoon and I think I'm going to swing my antenna in that direction to see if I pop up once we get them installed.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 14:41

(Reply to #19) #20

kg6wxc

not too bad

not so bad 2.1Mbps so far. not much packet loss on pings. (2% 146/143 returned, not bad) I have a tcpdump running as well, listening to the nodes WLAN0 interface. :) can you load up my webpage on kg6wxc-host.local.mesh? *edit* it's wobbly tho, goes to 2.1Mbps then drops back to 0.7. I'll let it sit for a bit.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 14:42

#21

n6tve

niiice

Wow, what a difference! Link works like a charm! I brought up the mesh status web page on your node and it came up instantaneously! That has never worked this well for me on any other (more local) node. I could even pull in your WXC Meshsite, pictures and all. Here are some ping results:
--- 10.150.7.200 ping statistics ---
79 packets transmitted, 79 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 4.299/75.771/1220.398 ms

Yup, 0% packet loss! This is better than I got to any local node in SB using 10Mhz b/w. Maybe it's less interference from ch1? Seems to me we should convince everyone in SB to switch to 5Mhz... Perhaps less theoretical max speed but more actual usable speed? My node seems to be transmitting around 1.6-2Mbps and yours around 1-1.5Mbps.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 14:52

#22

kg6wxc

interesting....

it does work pretty well actually... seems a bit slow on my end. looking at the packet dump from just after we changed, there are *a lot* of out of order packets, duplicate ACK's and a lot re-transmission going on. but yes, it's working well enough to send data now. I'll leave it for a bit and see if it improves. :)

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 15:05

(Reply to #22) #23

n6tve

in the fog

I'm totally in the fog, so no direction tuning possible (well, I could do it blind...).
A little longer ping run:
--- 10.150.7.200 ping statistics ---
385 packets transmitted, 366 packets received, 4% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 4.389/592.342/6268.873 ms

Image Attachments:

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 17:18

(Reply to #23) #24

kg6wxc

It was a good test. I think

It was a good test. I think you proved it can be done. :) Something to talk about on the net tonight. I am changing my settings back to 10MHz and going to swing my dish slightly to the south in the hopes I can see the new links going in today. They will be a shorter distance than Gibraltar for me (but at a much much lower alt site). We all want to know if it'll work any better.

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 15:10

#25

kg6wxc

it's holding up well

yes, I'm sure if we now took the time and effort to aim at each other better it would improve. Still an interesting experiment, and as someone once said "A few Mbps is WAY better than packet any day!" I'll leave it and watch it a bit until about 2pm when I start getting ready to head up to SB to install some new links for the network and then go open the club station!

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 15:42

(Reply to #25) #26

K6AH

Others should become believers in this approach...

I've set the standard for 2.4 GHz in San Diego to 5MHz bandwidth. There's just too much to gain in link quality and reliability and not that much of a sacrifice in throughput. I hope others read your thread here and become believers in this approach.

Andre

Tue, 07/05/2016 - 15:51

(Reply to #26) #27

kg6wxc

you might be on to something

you might be on to something there K6AH. I am amazed it's holding up as well as it is. I'd say, just guessing at it, that's it's averaging just over 1Mbps in the last hour or so. Sometimes it gets up to about 2.5. We just might have to try changing some of the other nodes settings too and see what happens. :)

Wed, 07/06/2016 - 00:14

(Reply to #27) #28

n6tve

I hate 5.8Ghz :-)

I have 4 5.8Ghz grid antennas laying unused in the yard and as many ubuquiti mini-pci radios in the drawer. Never could get it to work any distance. Our main repeater site in S.B. is colocated with a cell site with long distance links and I have the strong suspicion that it killed all 5.8Ghz wifi I tried. 2.4 has worked great on the other hand (e.g. link out to Santa Cruz island). In any case, I've had zero luck with 5.8Ghz. I'm sure others are way more successful than me... Maybe I should try again: there's nowhere to go but up, haha...

Wed, 07/06/2016 - 03:08

(Reply to #28) #29

kg6wxc

there may be some use for

there may be some use for that 5.8Ghz stuff yet! There are 2 new nodes up at the Mesa site as of today, might try pointing at those too and see how it goes. One is facing basically North toward Gibraltar, the other Westerly. West facing one is on a pole, on the west fence line, that Bill said used to hold your antenna actually. :) North is up on the roof of the building, under the Discone. I am also trying to setup a smallish "5MHz Bandwidth" Test, which you'll probably be able to get in on if you like. Please, send me your email, mine is mycallsign @ gmail . com 73!

Wed, 07/06/2016 - 08:57

(Reply to #29) #30

k1ky

I love 5.8 Ghz

We are having good success with 5.8 Ghz links - 30 and 35 miles using AirGrids and Nanobridges. Our 35 mile links are AIrGrid to AIrgrid 28dbi reflector, horizontal polarization @ 10 Mhz bandwidth. My 30 mile link is Nanobridge 25 dbi to Rocket Sector Antenna 20bdi/90 degree @ 10 Mhz bandwidth - gets around 20 db S/N. Very solid with the dual polarity. We try to stick with Part 15 channels where possible. Good throughput - 25.0 Txmbps. Don't forget about 3.4 Ghz options for Part 97 operations.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 19:44

(Reply to #30) #31

AE6XE

I've found that many channels

I've found that many channels are not usable at congested tower sites. I share a site with the FAA, AT&T, and a WISP. I ended up doing a 25 mile link on 5Ghz and went up and down the channels to find what was usable building an 'option' table. Don't give up to do an OK 5Mhz channel unless you know there isn't an option to do a better and higher throughput 10Mhz (or even 20Mhz) great channel somewhere.

I also used AirView to get a lay of the land. It didn't really help--I couldn't correlate what I saw with what channels were useable or not.

Joe AE6XE

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 16:08

(Reply to #31) #32

kg6wxc

Did we just set a record?

I'm not sure where else to put this, since we were talking about it here, here it is... I changed one of the Gibraltar Peak nodes to use 5MHz bandwidth last night as an experiment. It was the one facing Easterly, down the coast... As of this morning, it's now trying to link up with stations in San Diego County!! Over, what, 120 Miles away (probably more)

K6AH, do any of those neighbors look familiar to you at all?? I'm sorry that is so hard to read. If anyone wants the full size copy, please send me an email kg6wxc @ gmail . com.

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 16:49

(Reply to #32) #33

K6AH

Nice... that's 209 miles!

Well, K6TZ-GIB-NSM2-E60 heard them, but they didn't hear it.

K6AH-SAREDN-OT2GDL23 sits atop Mt Otay, just north of the border with Mexico. It is a M2 Rocket with a 120 deg sector antenna. Here's picture of it (note references to 230 deg should read 320 deg).

KG6JJI sits atop a hill in Del Mar. W6DMR-Crest is on top of a water tower in Del Mar supporting their local CERT operations. W6QAR-WTN sits atop a 13-story Qualcomm building in Sorrento Mesa (the Golden Triangle area).

It would be infinitely more impressive if you could actually pass data... but that would require a fair bit more effort and expense.

Andre, K6AH

Image Attachments:

Thu, 07/07/2016 - 19:18

#34

K6AH

Impossible path...

The path analysis confirms there's some sort of ducting going on here. The Earth is just too round ;-) It'll never be a reliable path. Interesting observation though, Eric.

Andre

Image Attachments:

Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network

Menu SF

You are here

Link from Port Hueneme to Santa Barbara

Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network

Search form

Menu SF

You are here

Link from Port Hueneme to Santa Barbara