[HamWAN PSDR] Haystack Site Outage

Mon Mar 13 23:27:52 PDT 2017

Cool – thanks.  Once again it seems my mind is the item suffering the outages these days….

Sigh

Cheers,

Rob

From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Nigel Vander Houwen
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 11:21 PM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Haystack Site Outage

Haystack is pretty well connected as well, it has links to Vancouver, Paine, and Queen Anne, as well as Bart and myself are uplink nodes connected to Haystack.

Nigel

On Mar 13, 2017, at 23:19, Rob Salsgiver <rob at nr3o.com> wrote:

I was thinking more about the strength/stability of Haystack.  When I was connecting up the hospital in Monroe I thought I remembered being told that Haystack was marginal due to the split from Paine and one of the other links being interfered with (Amazon?) – I might be mixing my site memories.  If it’s marginal I would like to see Haystack solidified (if possible) as I have Evergreen on there and it’s my #1 option for Everett Clinic.

Cheers,

Rob

From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Nigel Vander Houwen
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2017 10:48 PM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Haystack Site Outage

Rob,

That’s correct, the dish at haystack was turned a few degrees farther north to better connect Victoria. However, the link to Paine remains up, and has fairly good signal strength. Adding in the East Tiger<->Paine and Gold<->Paine links, the site is pretty well connected. Adding another dish to gain a few dB on an already decent signal isn’t currently on the plans.

Nigel

On Mar 13, 2017, at 14:21, Rob Salsgiver < <mailto:rob at nr3o.com> rob at nr3o.com> wrote:

Nigel,

If memory serves me correctly I think we swung the Paine dish to cover the new Victoria site last year.  Are there any plans to install a separate dish to optimize both links once the weather and access improve?

Cheers,

Rob / NR3O

From: PSDR [ <mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org> mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Nigel Vander Houwen
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2017 11:24 PM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring < <mailto:psdr at hamwan.org> psdr at hamwan.org>
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] Haystack Site Outage

Evening Everybody,

Today Bart and the site owner took another run at getting up to haystack and managed to fight their way up to the site. They managed to get a lot done, and Haystack is in much better shape.

*	They found some misbehaving equipment that had a huge draw (>400W continuous) on the power system up there, overwhelming the solar generation capacity, draining the batteries, and causing the generator to run more than it should have been needed, and then run out of fuel.
*	They brought up 40 gallons of fuel that was brought partway up the mountain on the last trip.
*	Bart replaced the Haystack-S3 modem to see if it would fix an issue we’re seeing with non-symmetric signal strengths. It didn’t resolve the issue, so we’ll revisit that issue again later.
*	Replaced the RJ45 connector for the Haystack-S3 modem that may have been the cause for the earlier Haystack-S3 outage.

All together, with the misbehaving loads removed from the system, and the generator refueled to get the batteries recharged so it’s not all on solar to bring things back up, things are looking much better.

We’ve powered back online all of the HamWAN equipment at the site, so the sectors and backbone links are all up and operating normally.

I’d like to thank again the folks who made the previous attempt and got the fuel most of the way up the mountain, as well as bart and the site owner for making the run today to finish the job. All the efforts are appreciated, and are paying off in the site being back online.

Nigel

On Mar 4, 2017, at 23:41, Nigel Vander Houwen < <mailto:nigel at nigelvh.com> nigel at nigelvh.com> wrote:

Hello All,

Our site at Haystack has been having some trouble with the solar charging setup, and has not been able to get much energy with the limited solar that remains working onsite, as such, the site owner has been intermittently running the generator to keep the batteries charged. Unfortunately, as of Friday the generator is out of fuel.

Bart, Bruce, and one or two others (I didn’t catch the names), made a heroic effort today to get onsite with snowmobiles and a snow cat to refuel the tanks, and repair the solar charging problems, but were stymied by snow conditions, and were not able to reach the site today.

Considering the limited solar functioning, and the clear weather today, we had a pretty good day, but the forecast doesn’t look promising for keeping that up.

I’ve shut down our sectors at Haystack to try and conserve some power, so if you normally connect to Haystack, or were looking to try, please be aware that for the moment, the Haystack sectors are offline.

We’ll let you know when we’re able to get the sectors back online. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get more fuel up there, and the extra solar capacity repaired.

Thanks again for the efforts of the volunteers that tried to reach the site today. It was a real slog, and the efforts are appreciated.

Nigel
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