Thursday15 Group2

From School2007

Dairy: Thursday 15 February 2007

1 Field Activity
2 Guests
3 DINNER @ Adriatico Guest House

[edit] Field Activity

[edit] Preparation

The day started early enough, with preparation to go to Muggia about 12km LOS from Galileo Guest Hose (GGH), ICTP Centre, Trieste Italy, despite the fact that it was raining, we all went there with enthusiasm.

Objective: We are going there to set up a wireless connection to our Laboratory at GGH.

We trekked to the gate with all the equipment and later boarded the bus waiting to take us to Muggia, the journey was smoooth without incidence, however, Rob was busy wth his laptop monitoring all the wireless connection on the road as we went wth a package called "kismet". This is a must software for wirelesss deployers!

[edit] AT MUGGIA:

We arrived to a good weather at Muggia, we started to mount the antennae, to provide power and to set up the link.

Mounting the Antennae:

We used compass to determine the direction of GGH, Trieste. It is about 352 azimuth to Muggia. We also used the telescope to see physically the line of site between Muggia and GGH. The antennae was now mounted to face the direction of GGH. It did not take a great deal to get that done!

We spoke to Carlo through walkie talkie to put on the signal generator, so as to generate signal for us, Rob and others were busy trying to use "WI-SPY" (a must buy tool, a USB spectrum analyser, as low as $100 but can do the job of Spectrum analyzer of about $10,000, what a great tool and revelation during the school, if you care for one, check this site www.metrix.net) to monitor the signal generated from GGH.

This small but wonderful tool enabled us to see at what frequency Carlo was generating the signal from GGH, we were able to also see other networks around us, we asked him to put off the radio again and the frequency disappear, we asked Carlo to put it on again, then the frequency re-appeared, then we are sure it is our own frequency! There was no interference on our frequency.

With the discovery, we now replaced the wispy with our feeder on the two antennaes, however spectrum analyzer was used to double check what we did initially, and it was obvious we had a perfect job done by the wi spy".

After successfully mounting of the antennae, it was now time to check the link between Muggia and GGH, Trieste. We were able to ping, but we counldnt browse, we were not too impresed by this but it was as a result of our inadequate preparartion the initial day, some of the tools we took to Muggia were not properly tested, this reminds me of my late mum saying that "failing to plan is planning to fail" .

We were already running out of time, it is time to go back to GGH otherwise we will miss lunch, we hurriedly pack our things, but we still have time to take group photograph before departing for GGH.

[edit] Lunch & Review of our Work

After lunch, it is time for stock taking, it was obvious to all of us that we didnt plan well the previous day for the journey we went for in the morning, so many things were reviewed esecially by Carlo and Rob, we all saw our shortcomings and we all agreed that in future we will do better than we did, howeer with the following points in view:

Plan in Advance

Make link simulation in the Laboratory before going to site

There should be better communication between subgroups (Communication, antennae and power groups)

Double check and if possible triple check all the equipment to taking to site for their functionality

Make sure you label of equipment properly for proper identification when you get to site

Think about all the minutest detail of what you will need and how to go about it before setting out to site!

Finally, It is better to heed the above listed advice otherwise you will end up wasting your resources!

[edit] Guests

The VISIT of ITU Personnel and Director of National Institute of Telecommunication in Poland came as a pretty surprise for us during the day. They told us about ways there can be more collaboraion between ICTP and NIT, and ITU of course. This will invariably lead to more courses and programmes for people from the developing countries thereby increasing manpower development in these countries.

[edit] DINNER @ Adriatico Guest House

The Sectretary of our school (Suzie Radosic) was on hand with her band to give us a treat of our life. She was so wonderful on drum set, that I wondered that a lady could play drumming set like this, in my part of the country, that kind of task is left for men, but she proved beyond reasonable doubt that what men can do women can probably do it better!

Suzie on the drum set with her Band

The day did not however end, without Carlo showing us his other side, he showed us that he is not only goood in deploying wireles technologies but he is also good in.......