[HamWAN PSDR] Baldi Deployment Report: Part Deux

[Doug Kingston]

Thanks Bart!

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 12:21 PM Bart Kus <me at bartk.us> wrote:

> Better late than never!
>
> We visited Baldi instead of Rattlesnake last Saturday.  Both sites were
> in rain, and Baldi had the easier set of tasks, so we opted for the
> safer option.  Here's the work report:
>
> 1) Baldi has had a server so old for so many years that it's RAID
> drivers are no longer supported by HPE for management within ESXi. It's
> also had very little RAM (8GB) and drive space (RAID1 of 73GB drives).
> I took one of my spare servers to serve as a new hypervisor up there.
> It has 48GB RAM and 4x250GB SSD in RAID10 (500GB space).  After install,
> I discovered iLO had somehow lost all the credentials I saved into it.
> It took all of Sunday to setup a special PXE environment + OS to finally
> gain control of iLO from the server side (not network side).  Everything
> here is finally working as it should, and VMs will be migrated soon so
> we can decommission the old server.
>
> 2) The switch in "Building 2" at Baldi was full!  We managed to install
> a new 24-port gigabit switch, pictured here:
> https://photos.app.goo.gl/8a98D44dDxkeqJn37  This switch is important as
> it links "Building 1", and "Building 3".  We also discovered the UPS
> powering all the repeaters and the network gear was overloaded.  It
> would beep when things were transmitting.  We re-arranged the load so
> that it's only backing up the network gear now, and the repeaters will
> need their own larger UPS.
>
> 3) We installed the shield on the CampMurray facing dish.  Over the last
> week I noticed the VPol signal on the link was really low (-94dBm)
> whereas the HPol was just fine (-65dBm).  Prior to shield install on the
> dish, I inspected the connectors for any water ingress.  I did not find
> any.  However, I did find what looked like crusty build-up on the center
> pin of the VPol RP-SMA-to-N adapter. This adapter was re-used from the
> old 3ft dish.  That dish had a split-open HPol connector (likely caused
> by ice expansion), which I suspect allowed water to pool in the feedhorn
> and probably drip down to this adapter, causing it to build-up whatever
> this grey substance is.  We did our best to clean up the connector with
> the tools at hand.  After re-installing and re-aligning the dish, VPol
> is now reading -84dBm instead of -94dBm.  While this is a 10dB
> improvement, there's still clearly a problem.  We need to return with a
> new adapter, and a method to properly clean the female N connector on
> the antenna to remove any residue which might still be there. Possibly
> re-compress the pin if it was split open too much by the residue.
>
> Another thing which might be affecting VPol is misalignment of the
> corresponding dish at CampMurray.  That dish was never aligned with
> Baldi for lack of ever hearing a signal.  If it's severely off-axis in
> the horizontal, the VPol transmission might be getting shunted by its
> shield (conductive vertically when azimuth is off).  Both things need to
> be addressed before this link can be considered done.
>
> 4) We had serious Ethernet link stability problems with the new
> Rattlesnake.Baldi dish.  Its cable is routed just a few feet from an FM
> broadcast antenna, and several repeater antennas.  We installed a 30m
> (100ft) run of multimode fiber to connect the Rattlenake.Baldi modem to
> the switch in Building 3.  The link came up and has been rock solid.  I
> also suspected there might have been water in the original RJ45 leading
> to these Ethernet link outages.  This was inspected and the connector
> was found to be dry, so there's no worry of corrosion due to PoE
> voltage.  While the cause of the CAT5 link failure is not known, I think
> we can narrow it down to either RFI or a bad crimp job on the tower-side
> connector.  The shack-end connector was re-done twice with no change in
> link failures. Anyway, this modem is now happy with the fiber and has
> great signal to Rattlesnake (-55dBm)!
>
> Now let's hope for some nice weather for the next visit to Rattlesnake,
> which requires work at about the 150ft level of a tower.
>
> --Bart
>
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