Today the task was to set up the wireless link from two different locations around Trieste town; San Giusto castle, and Muggia (church of "Muggia Vecchia") to Galileo Guest House-ICTP.
Around 09:25 in the morning, we started our journey taking all necessary equipments, tools and cables in ICTP bus to the first location San Giusto, which is 7.49km away from Mira Mare castle. Luckily the weather was sunny but cold too. At 10:00 we reached in the vicinity of castle, but due to traffic it was difficult for bus driver to drop us at castle, so we walked for about 15 minutes. MR. Carlo and Mr. Marco had already reached there in car. However, Prof. Pietrosemoli accompanied us in the bus. On reaching there Carlo, Marco, Pietrosemoli and other participants started setting up the solar panel to get the electrical energy and installation of the parabolic dish. Some participants were walking around and taking pictures. Carlo told us how the solar panel, inverter, and battery work. He told that this panel can generate 20.90volts (open circuit volts), short circuit current of 3 amperes and peak power of 45 watts. But its efficiency totally depends on the solar light. At that time, we got 20 volts with 1.3 ampere of current. After some time we finished the installation of antenna and now it was the time to find out the exact angle and direction at which we can get best signal. Actually, Carlo had already installed an access point at GGH so that we could get signal from there. The maximum speed obtained was 11Mbps using Biquad antenna with parabolic dish. At 12:20 we started our journey back to ICTP, and were informed that we should be in lab at 14:00 so that we could move to the second location.
After the lunch break, all participants were in lab at 14:00. Carlo gave some instructions and assigned tasks to different people so that, the work could be done in less time. He told that he will stay at ICTP to check the access point for any problem and Marco, Rob Flickenger and Prof. Pietrosemoli will come with us to Muggia (11.8km from ICTP). He further added that, we should not concentrate on the speed rather; important thing is the signal strength.
The journey to the Muggia started and during this Marco & Flickenger showed us using the GPS on the lap top, in which direction we are moving and they were also trying to locate the signal from the access point. The software they used for this purpose was KISSMAC. On the way to Muggia there is a very narrow tunnel about 500m long, and only one vehicle can go through the tunnel at a time. Exactly at 15:20, we unloaded our stuff from the bus and started the installation of equipment. I was assigned to install the solar panel to supply the power, but unfortunately I was unable to find solar power because sun was setting and the light intensity was very low. Any way the batteries of the lap top helped us and we were able to check out the antenna’s signal strength.
At 17:00 we were in bus ready to come back at ICTP. During the way more than half of the participants got down at shopping centre and down town and remaining reached at the ICTP………….
During last two weeks Prof. Struzak and Prof. Pietrosemoli gave us the theory of building and setting up antennas and today, we practiced setting up antennas in the field and finding the exact location to install antenna to obtain the strongest signal.