[HamWAN PSDR] How to Aim Uplink on a Tower

[Kenny Richards]

Herb,

The approach which has always been used when I have been involved uses the
output of /interface wireless scan 0, but it really requires two people.

1) person on tower preps the dish and does their best to aim it in the
right direction. They report to ground (usually via a HT) that they are
ready.
2) person on ground that is logged into radio, issues the scan command.
3) The ground person at this point is in control and should be doing almost
all the talking. (which is good, because the person the tower needs both
hands aiming the dish)
4) ground person reads the signal level, whether they see a connection or
not, etc. They need todo this continually, because the person on the
tower is completely operating on what they are being told. This means you
keep swing in one direction until the ground person tells you to stop and
go back the other direction.
5) remember that you will need to adjust horizontal and vertical
multiple times to fine tune the signal.
6) also remember the scan sucks and will 'stop' updating when it looses the
signal.
7) the tower person has to try and go as slow and steady as possible when
adjusting.

If you are using a professional tower climber, get a set of FRS radios or
something to send up with them. I'd be surprised if the pro's haven't done
this general alignment before, but that is just a guess.

Kenny



On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 1:53 PM Herb Weiner <herbw at wiskit.com> wrote:

> In the near future, Oregon HamWAN (http://www.oregonhamwan.org) will
> be deploying three sectors and an uplink (aimed at Larch Mountain) on the
> KOIN Tower in Southwest Portland.
>
> What is the best way to optimize the aiming of our uplink? I am familiar
> with the use of /interface wireless scan 0, but it is difficult to
> optimize the signal strength using the output of this command.
>
> Aim Master (https://github.com/HamWAN/aim) looked like a promising
> approach, but it appears as if this has not been updated since 2016, and it
> appears to use SNMP MIBs that are no longer supported by the current
> firmware.
>
> We need to provide instructions for a professional tower climber that will
> probably have limited, if any, experience with HamWAN.
>
> Thanks for your suggestions.
>
> Herb, AA7HW
>
>
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