[HamWAN PSDR] Any other ideas on how to experiment with hamwan?

[Carl]

Hi Chris,

I didn't see another response to your question, so took a quick look at where you are versus Gold. I came up with only slightly different numbers than you did, but as you note, it does not look promising.

Taking a guess at which townhouse you are in (your coordinates resolved to the middle of an intersection), I show your bearing to Gold to be 64.69 degrees at a range of 21.95 miles.  There is a ridgeline west of you between 9th and 10th that is 284 feet (ground level), and you are at 267 feet (ground level).

A three story townhouse is going to be what - maybe 30 feet above ground level at the roof? Guessing. So that would put you at about 297 feet. You would just barely squeeze over the ridgeline to your west, assuming there was nothing there (house, etc.). And I'm sure there is something there, so basically you are a no-go for Gold.

Further, even if you could just barely squeeze over the top of that bump, it would drastically interfere with what is known as your Fresnel zone, which for a shot as far away as Gold would have about a 70 foot radius (in simple terms, that means you need to be another 70 feet higher).

The last piece of bad news is you are about 5 degrees inside the far boundary of the sector (it goes from 60 degrees to 180 degrees), and the best signal is near the center of the sector with weaker signals as you approach the edges. I'm north of you, and am only about 2 degrees inside the sector. I've got a clear line of sight to Gold with some minor near-end Fresnel zone interference, and I just barely get a usable signal with a 2 foot dish when conditions are good, and an unusable signal when conditions are poor.

So I'm sorry to say, the chances of you getting something to work are slim to none at your location.  I took a quick look at your shot to Haystack, and you've got a 470 foot high obstacle too close to you to get over. So that won't work either.

Maybe sometime down the road we'll find another site to put sectors on that you can see. A city with hills and trees is not a promising place to try and find HamWAN shots unfortunately.

Carl, N7KUW

-----Original Message-----
From: PSDR [mailto:psdr-bounces at hamwan.org] On Behalf Of Chris Prosser via PSDR
Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2019 10:21 AM
To: psdr at hamwan.org
Subject: [HamWAN PSDR] Any other ideas on how to experiment with hamwan?

Hi folks,

I was hoping to take some time this summer during my work sabbatical to build a station on hamwan and experiment with it, my idea was to experiment with voice over IP with concurrent downloads/uploads and fq_codel to do traffic shaping and see how a saturated link performed. But I just mapped out my home location and things don't look good.

Here's where I'm at:
47°41′5″ N  122°21′48″ W
270ft

Looking at Gold Mountain:
Distance = 37.889 km (23.543 miles)
     Azimuth, Point 1 to Point 2: 247.21° True
     Azimuth, Point 2 to Point 1: 66.86 ° True

I'm shielded to the south by Queen Anne, to the east by Phinney Ridge, and when I look out towards Gold Mountain all I see are tree tops and one or two roofs. This is from a third-floor balcony in my townhouse, while I could probably get another 10 feet of elevation on my roof, I'm scared to go on the roof and I'm 90% sure that doesn't give me any line of sight.

Am I correct in assuming that I'm pretty much out of luck with my QTH? I'd really prefer to be able to run things from here if at all possible.
 
But if there isn't a creative solution, it looks like I'm going to have to figure out a portable solution. I came across this post documenting a mobile station that someone had built: https://cdine.org/2017-11-19-portable-hamwan-station/

Would the high power version help with range? it's not clear to me which side tends to be the limiter in HamWan. https://mikrotik.com/product/sxtsq_5_high_power 

Then I need to find a place where I can set up within range and not sit in sun the whole day. 

Thanks,
Chris


-- 
  Chris Prosser
  chris at nart.org
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