Australian Camp Oven Festival

Every two years, the Australian Camp Oven Festival is held in Millmerran, Qld. In 2006, Fran was responsible for running the office and I offered to provide the festival with Internet connectivity during the week long event.

Arrival at the show grounds was at 6:00am and by 7:00am I was on my way home with a dish all tuned and ready to go. This was a true test of the mobile nature of our new dish and it worked to perfection.

The festival was a great success and many visitors from around the world came to look at and taste genuine Australian camp oven tucker.

I played a minor role as one of the folks sitting on a quad directing campers to their sites and reuniting long lost friends.

A good time was had by all.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Millmerran

Three setups, and by the end of June, four, all in the same town. First off at a Caravan Park for a bit followed by a previous location, and now for five months with an expected interruption at the end of June in a back yard.

Had some fun and games with IP addresses changing. VoIP stopped working - Onno's fault - uhm, actually, no, not Onno's fault, - uhm, equipment fault - uhm, no routing issue - uh, does it work now - woops?

Took delivery of four SkyEdge kits, one for me with a 2 Watt BUC, all with 1.2m dishes. We'll bolt three to roof-tops at clients, the fourth stays home and soon I'll be able to bolt it to my mount. It's expected to be joined at the end of June by a sister kit, which will give us three modems, three satellite Internet dishes and one TV receive dish, all in for an adventure in the bush. More when it gets confirmed.

Graham's Creek

This is getting to be pretty straight forward, soon I'll be wanting to buy a smaller dish so I won't have to lug so much weight from the back of the van, but you get that.

VoIP isn't quite there yet. I've been playing with making the call settle, but at the moment it still takes around 30 seconds before both sides can hear each other and that simply just won't do. I've also been playing a little with Bluetooth and getting my Nokia 6310i to become part of my VoIP network. I can make my VoIP system detect an incoming GSM call and I can make a one-way outgoing call, eg. they can hear me, but I cannot yet hear them.

I invested in a high-gain GSM/CDMA dual band antenna because while VoIP isn't yet working we're currently on the fringes of Optus' GSM coverage. I briefly played with putting my phone in the van and talking to it over Bluetooth, but the hands-free kit doesn't like that and the phone gets completely confused.

And then the storm hit...

There was a little cold cell around Brisbane which caused hailstones to pile up to a meter high in some places. This being the (sub-)tropics and all, this was a regular occurrence - not. Two hours north of Brisbane, were we are, the hail also visited, but a larger problem was rain, lots and lots of rain in a very short time. It filled the dam, it filled the paddocks, the driveway and the electronics box. Fortunately the 240V side stayed dry, but the sensitive side, the electronics were not so lucky. It appears as if the hail damaged the water proofing, which then opened the way to allow water to drip in from the top and drip past the circuit boards to pool in the bottom. The next morning I turned on the equipment only to have the modem not respond.

Open up the box, lots of water.

After tipping out the water and drying the electronics for a few hours and warming the whole lot in the sun, I dared to switch it on. All was just fine and dandy. I hooked it all back up and proceeded to go back to work. I started composing an email to Gilat about their hardware and how it continued to amaze me that it keeps working regardless of how it gets treated, saltwater air, heat and now rain, only to find that the modem would go away for a little while every now and then. This happens on occasion when satellite operations does some work, but because of the water I figured I'd better give them a call. Suffice to say that the problem wasn't at their end.

During my call to the BOC the modem gave up. It refused to see the satellite and kept doing a self-test. After some lengthy phone calls to various departments and my insurance company - electronics insurance is worth every cent. Expensive hobby, satellite equipment.

Millmerran

Setup in this location was started late in the afternoon and I'd forgotten how quick it gets dark by the time you get this far North. Fortunately I was ably assisted by the local home-owner who in a previous life was well acquainted with nuts and bolts. The whole frame was together in a matter of 30 minutes.

We waited until the next day to put the dish in place and the electronics now have a better spot with the feeder cables on the inside, going back up the centre beam like they used to. Alignment was simple and our cross-poll check with the BOC was great.

I'm not happy with the water proofing of the current setup, and the tarpaulin is stopping an airflow across the heat-sinks, but with overnight temperatures at 0°C, I suspect that cooking the electronics is not likely to be an issue. I do worry about the direct sun, but the temps only come up to 18° in the day, so direct sunlight is not nearly as severe as experienced in Crossing Falls and the rest of the top-end.

I need to replace one of the feeder cables which looks like it got pinched in transit and I'm trying to determine if it would be worth the effort to install the wireless gear inside the electronics boxes, or if outside will continue to provide the best solution.

I'm still looking for a nicer way to attach the boxes to the frame and suspect that some measuring and drilling may come to pass in the next few months.