Main / LogWednesday22
To set up a wireless link from Muggia to Galileo Guest House-ICTP.
Around 08:30 in the morning, we started our journey taking all necessary equipments, tools and cables in ICTP bus to the location Muggia, which is 11 km away from the ICTP. We got to Muggia at 10:00 am.
On reaching there, we unloaded our stuff from the bus and started installing the equipments. All the groups started the installation of the mast and antennas to set up the links. Some groups used the solar panel as a power source, but the weather wasn´t favourable for the solar panel. Anyway the batteries were fully charged, enough to turn on the access points and we were able to check out the received signal strength.
After the antenna installation, we established the azimuth of the link. At the home base, Carlo had already installed an access point, which we eventually pinged at the remote site.
Some groups used kissmac, iwconfig (metrix), site survey (linksys) to establish a link with the AP at the home base. Connections were made and dropped several times but with further antenna alignments, we managed to establish a link strong enough to make a voice call to Venezuela and a video conference with Carlo at the homebase.
Then, we dismantle all equipments and return to GGH.
After the lunch break, all participants were in lab at 15:00. Rob, Carl, Marco and Prof. Pietrosemoli gave some advice on how to make a proper set up, and they pointed out some errors that we made at the time of installation, so that the work could be done in less time.
In particular, we could have paid more attention to the following points:
- The tripod could have been properly balanced (we had assembled it for height rather than stability).
- Antenna alignment was difficult but a slow, methodical approach with more fine-grained controls would have been advantageous.
- The antenna radiation pattern could have been checked. One wants to make sure that the major lobe is used -- a link budget calculation before hand gives an indication of the expected values.
- Better to first align horizontally, then vertically (the antennas that we used are more sensitive to horizontal adjustment -- it is better to leave the fine-grained adjustment for last).
- Important to first test the signal and noise levels, then ping and route to internet, one step at a time.
- Though we knew that Carlo's antenna was vertically aligned, we never explicitly checked this on the day.
- Keep all IP addresses, routes, DNS, etc. clearly written down with you. Quite easy to forget something amidst all the detail.