Field Reports

State of the Mesh - March 19, 2022 - Field Report from Randy W3RWN

If you have not been involved or paying attention to mesh for a while, you may have been hearing that results have been mixed.

Happy to report that over the last couple of weeks, we've been tweaking things and can now report that the RF portion of the Mesh is now better understood.

What we have learned in the last week is that we have 3 or 4 clusters of hams that have RF connectivity between themselves.

(Mesh Map at end of text)

Lincoln Park - High Point: That's the bottom left of the graphic, and has 5 stations.

The 3 you see are N7LNX, W7GFW, and WX7L - Additionally NN7M and N4RDZ (Not shown) are RF connected to the WX7L.

N7LNX is hosting a tunnel for this zone, and we're aiming to have Ron connect his end of the chain to HamWAN soon, with my help.

West Seattle Golf Course: That's the right hand side of the graphic and has 6 stations.

WR5J at the top, then AB7F, Brookdale West Seattle, and Mount St Vincent.

Over on the far right of the triangle you have N7OEP, K7RSD and KE7UDX.

AB7F and K7RSD are hosting tunnels to connect this zone.

I think we'd like to use WR5J Hamwan, and potentially install a HamWAN link at KE7UDX to provide connectivity for this zone that doesn't rely on wired Internet.

Note on Mount Saint Vincent - the RF Noise level at MSV is -87dBm which is higher than it should be. The MSV mesh radio is likely being desensed by the Cell Site sharing the roof at MSV. We may be able to implement RF filters to knock down the cell signa to our receiver.

Erskine Way: This is on the left. KK7PW, N7FS, N7JWW and KE7TNM have a series of RF paths between them. KK7PW is hosting the tunnel for this cluster.

Admiral Way: This cluster does not yet have Internet or HamWAN connectivity and consists Steve N0FPF and the Brookdale Admiral site. Brookdale Admiral has a visual path to Beacon, so HamWAN connectivity may be possible to light up this zone.

Downtown Seattle: a Tunnel Router was installed at Seattle EOC this week, and it is connected to HamWAN. The plan is to get filters on the Beacon mesh node, and to install a mesh node at Capitol Hill/Capitol Park. The downtown cluster is W7ACS-SeattleEOC, W7ACS-Beacon and W7ACS-CapitolPark.

Next Steps:

Various topography factors are preventing these clusters from gaining 2GHz RF connectivity.

However, as long as 1 or 2 stations in the mesh can see a HamWAN site, we can join the islands over 5GHz HamWAN using AREDN Tunnels to the new SeattleEOC router.

HamWAN - Mesh Points of Interface:

WR5J - Curt

N4RDX-Ron

KE7UDX or South Seattle College

Brookdale Admiral

Providence Mount St Vincent.

West Seattle Tower/High Point

Completing these 5.9 GHz to 2.4GHz interconnects would then extend HamWAN connectivity to everyone in the AREDN 2.4 GHz mesh.

73,

Randy W3RWN