Anchorage Senior Activities Center is On the MESH
On Thursday, January 17, Sid Atwood (KL7SID) and I visited the Anchorage Senior Activities Center to repoint the 3.4 GHz Ubiquiti NanoStation. We had installed that node quite some time ago, anticipating that it would connect to another node at KL7SB’s tower that we hadn’t installed yet, and still have yet installed. It finally occurred to me that we installed a node atop Site Summit sometime after the Senior Center install and that the Senior Center node should be able to link with site Summit. I ran a path study with Radio Mobile online to confirm, and indeed it indicated we should have a good path.
Sid and I headed for the roof, I spun the node on the mast and eyeballed an alignment with Site Summit, and bam! The red light on the node came on almost instantly to indicate we had a connection.
A quick check inside showed we were getting nearly 20 Mbps throughput. The signal level is not great, but it’s solid, and once some additional nodes are installed in the area, we’ll repoint to improve the situation. That being said, the current connection is indeed doing a great job.
The Senior Center is on the air with the MESH as well as 40 and 80 meters HF. A couple dual band verticals are to be installed to give 2 meter and 440 coverage, and a triband yagi is planned for 20, 15, and 10 meters.
If you are a “senior” and frequent the Senior Center, check in with Sid to have a go or to get involved. Some nice gear was donated to the club which we have deployed to the Senior Center and still needs to be interconnected and set up. How about it? Contact info@kl7aa.org if interested.
73,
Kent Petty, KL5T
Vice President
