Yokine

Yay, the service upgrade has finally happened.

After spending too much time looking for a provider who would upgrade my service to a 1Mbit connection and having to deal with the government changing the funding regime again, I have found a new satellite internet provider, DragNET.

In the back-end, it's still an Optus B3 service using Gilat hardware, but I've now actually decommissioned my SkyBlaster 360e which has been keeping me online since we started our journey (albeit the third actual modem, first one replaced because a firmware upgrade in Dunsborough, the second one was replaced in Mount Pleasant after a storm hit us in Graham's Creek.)

The new modem - which I've had since April 2006 - sitting in a box - is a SkyEdge modem. It gives me connectivity to the same satellite, that is Optus B3 - though I could have opted for D1, I stayed with B3 to keep VoIP connectivity.

So, now with a new service I have a 1Mbit download and a 256Kbit upload with 5Gb of data for the same cost as my previous service. VoIP is actually working and I'm a happy camper.

Yokine

Setting up in a back yard where you can park the van a few meters from the site is always handy, and so it was for this installation.

I've initiated an upgrade to a SkyEdge platform, and we'll see how well that performs. It may also turn out to be on a different satellite, Optus D1, rather than Optus B3.

VoIP is coming soon...

Kalgoorlie

Well for the first time in four years, I'm currently online via ADSL. That isn't expected to be for long, but the dish was going to be in the way for Australia day celebrations, so concessions had to be made :-)

Nollamara

Setup here last time was simple, now it's a doddle.

As a means to keep the kit all cool, I put a picnic table above the boxes and the temperature in them appeared to drop dramatically.

I have not yet actually inserted a thermometer into the box with the modem, but will do so soon.

Mount Hawthorn

Arriving late at this site the home owners were keen to see the dish in action. So with a little assistance, the Van was reversed into the driveway and the contraption bolted together.

The tripod didn't quite assemble as simply as usual because I'd left the feet attached in an attempt to simplify the install further. I'll likely need to revisit that.

The electronics boxes were getting quite hot in Kalgoorlie, so I've been investigating some means to keep the boxes cool. Currently the boxes are stored in the shade and I've been investigating umbrellas, a safari roof, peltier devices, white and chrome paint, fans, attachment to the mount, but none of those ideas actually capture what I really think would get the thing done.

Kalgoorlie

The installation here is pretty straightforward. The dish is a one-person job, the tripod started the process, the 1.2m dish, which was installed onto the tri-pod for the second time - first time in Perth last month, is now looking normal - albeit small.

I've hung the electronics off the mount, putting them into the shade of the dish, because the angle of the dish is much lower, the shade is smaller.

I experimented with a wireless direct connection between my computer and the dish, but for some reason I cannot make the connection stay up for more than 15 seconds at a time, it then disconnects and reconnects, making for a painful experience.

I'm getting conflicting reports on my Mbit connection, so I'll be following that up. I've got the hardware, have had that since about April, but the account behind the scenes is taking some doing.

VoIP will have to wait just a little longer, because my current Gilat SkyBlaster 360e is not supported and I've not yet upgraded my account to a Gilat SkyEdge.

Nollamara

Setting up in the back yard involved lugging the dish through the garden gate, but that was about the extent of the exercise.

With a whole yard to choose from, set-up took an hour, now we're finally getting to the point where we have a mobile installation.

Wundowie

After four years of lugging a 1.8m (well, 2.0m) dish around the country, I finally got around to buying a smaller set-up. The hardware is almost identical, the biggest difference is that the transmitter is now 2 Watt, instead of 1 Watt.

Whilst driving through Broken Hill, on the trip from Millmerran to Perth, I finally had a spare moment to drill some holes into the bull bar and line those up with holes in the mounting pole.

I hadn't yet attempted to use the mount, but Richard was keen to see my set-up, because all he'd seen to date was photos.

So, if it weren't for the lost cable, it would have taken less than 30 minutes to set-up, from start to finish.

That really means that we now have a truly mobile kit.

You cannot see the black electronics boxes, but I've left the red steel behind in Millmerran and changed over to water proof Pelican cases. Not sure how we'll go with the heat, but from a water/moisture perspective, this is all good.

Crossing Falls

It didn't work.

Setup was simple, lining up the dish was simple, dealing with the strange high angle of the dish was even simple. The tuner would tune to the satellite, but the modem would just sit there blinking with no actual connection to the 'net.

I was out of GSM mobile phone range and on the very edge of CDMA coverage, so talking to the Broadcast Operations Centre (BOC), was a bit complicated, and no-one could tell me what went wrong or why.

This was the time that I learnt the value of a persistent technician, a dedicated support centre, staffed with individuals who understand their technology and appreciate what it might be like to be in the bush on your own trying to make this stuff work. The guys at the BOC went out of their way to assist and we finally nailed the problem.

Initially I'd tuned to B3 in the new location, because that was what I was supposed to do. It didn't work, so I tuned to C1. That still didn't work. It turns out that the modem can receive tuning frequencies from the satellite and I missed an update, because no-one sent out any notifications.

We then tried to use the modem management software to put the new frequencies in, after one of the BOC staff actually found a 360E in their demo setup and read the list from its configuration. No matter what, I still couldn't talk to my modem. It appears that if it is connected to the dish, it ignores configuration parameters from the Ethernet socket, but no manual that I have access to will tell you that.

Initially we wondered if the problem was due to my wireless link, we even tested the Ethernet cable that had let us down in Dunsborough, but none of that seemed to be the cause of our challenges. None the less, it was decided that it would be prudent to eliminate the wireless link from the equation and I made an 80m Ethernet lead that has since been used many times, to link the computer directly to the modem on the other side of the property.

So, I've finally modified the frequencies, gotten on-line and now I need to still migrate to the new B3 location, which I was pretty hesitant to do. So, I noted down all the frequencies, crossed my fingers and tried it. After reprogramming the new settings, I was finally back on-line on the trusty B3 satellite in its new orbit.

Suffice to say that I was not looking forward to our trek down the Stuart Highway where the plan was to setup the dish in a new location every night.

During our stay I modified the cooling setup and instead of using aspirated air in an open box, I sealed the boxes, attached ruddy big heat sinks to both the inside and outside of each box and forced air around the box on the inside - with an extra one on a hot chip on the modem - to make the air the same temperature everywhere. On the outside I blow air across the heat-sink, to make it cooler than the box, thus sucking heat from the inside of the box. Not pretty, not efficient, but it appears to do the job.

Dunsborough

A time of great turmoil.

Staying in Dunsborough introduced us to the ocean and salt. 53 days of rain didn't help and humidity was a really big problem.

Setup was simple, we had a parking bay next to the house and power from the shed next to that. Pointing the dish was becoming simpler and I don't actually recall having to pull out any hair to make the magic happen.

During our stay in Dunsborough it rained a lot. So much so that the tarpaulin invention made in Yangebup was put properly to the test. I got up out of bed several times during the night when another severe down pour came along, one night even getting out in my pyjamas to cover over the electronics, just in case the tarpaulin ripped or came loose. There was never any problem. We'd exchanged the tarpaulin on our pass through Perth, but I was still quite fearful of having the new one rip to shreds and bring our adventure to a premature end.

During our stay, Optus brought the C1 satellite on-line. This affected us in several ways.

Our original satellite was Optus B3. It has been in orbit for a while and I think it was running out of capacity, because it hosted my service, and a whole bunch of others including Foxtel, Austar, Aurora and countless international broadcasters as well.

With the arrival of C1, the signal would be boosted and everyone would get a better deal. Except that of course the B3 VSAT users got to stay with B3. So, they had a process of moving the satellite and having the signal be available on both during the transition phase.

In addition to this, Optus also phased out the 360 modem for a 360E, a firmware upgrade. However Optus did not do any upgrades, they thought it was simpler to swap-out the modems. Except mine was bolted to the dish in a red-box.

I asked my father to ship the plastic enclosure to me, because I didn't want to change the serial numbers and upset the apple-cart, and took receipt of my new shiny 360E. I powered off, swapped out the boards, and powered it all back up. It didn't work.

I swapped them back. It still didn't work. You should probably know that during the board swap, the red boxes with the electronics were still bolted to the dish. The dish was covered in a large tarpaulin and it was pouring down with rain. So much so that there was 5cm of water underneath the dish - seems the driveway wasn't quite flat and we had the low end. So here I was, sitting in the pouring rain, under a tarpaulin, with my feet in 5cm of water, swapping out electronic equipment that was both expensive and fragile.

I spent several days troubleshooting the issue, including connecting the modem directly to the workstation and finally discovered that there was a loose Ethernet cable in the wireless box that was causing grief. After fixing that, it all worked as advertised.

I spent several anxious hours on the phone attempting to find out what would happen when I got to Crossing Falls, because the final transition, when B3 occupied a new location, would be completed in the time it took us to drive to Crossing Falls (some 3000km north of where we were). I was assured that it all would work fine.

On our way through Perth we unloaded the remote aerial masts and the loading crane calling them both a bad joke. I had grandiose plans to create a better crane, but manpower is to date by far the simplest.

Nabawa

Setup was in the grounds of the Chapman Valley Primary School. Many hands make light work and the local Macintosh User Group, GMUG, had several of its members out, including the principal and part of his family.

Initial challenges were the trees in the school-yard next door and I made an error with the initial point, so we spent a little while moving the frame around and getting the angles right. We again used the remote wireless antenna mount, but only to cross the school play ground and point at the library.

This setup was used to teach the kids about building their own web-site, though admittedly, not a lot of actual surfing was done, because we had our hands full building a site and I couldn't figure out how to get my machine to act as a gateway on their local wireless network.

The biggest challenge in that was that the modem only gives out an IP address using DHCP, so I needed to find a way to get my machine associated with that address, while not intercepting the IP addresses of any of the other wireless networks. In the end, it was simpler to plug/unplug the cable from the switch and I gave up the experiment as a bad joke, though I suspect that my current set-up would be able to deal with it if the time came.

Geraldton

After my successes in Kalgoorlie, I was not prepared at all for this installation site. The site is at the bottom of a garden, lots of room and the removal of the dish from the van and the installation of the frame was quite simple. Finding power and getting ready for the install was also pretty straight forward.

The land was on the side of a hill. The house had been built on the street level, and major earthworks had been completed to make that happen. As a result, the site itself, while spacious, was three metres lower than the house. To make things more exciting, there was a line of tall trees with about a metre between them, each was about 15 to 20 meters tall.

I spent the next six hours in the hot sun, moving the frame around to get some signal, any signal. I checked the hardware, the location, the elevation, the compass, you name it. In the end it turned out to be the trees. Final connectivity came swiftly, when I finally managed to point at a gap between two of the behemoths. Of course, the smallest amount of wind would block the signal, but it was the best I could do.

Getting wireless to work was another challenge, because the setup worked initially, but after a bit of rain, the hill was sodden and acted as a nice big barrier to the signal. The solution was to use the two 18dBi Yagi's pointing at each other, a mere 30 meters apart - very overkill. We used one of the remote antenna mounts for the first time and it worked to spec.

We had purchased a cheap large tarpaulin to cover the dish which lost several eyes during some of the rain and wind that came along, so some anxious moments were had when we'd come out in the morning.

Kalgoorlie

Our first remote install. After building the loading crane and nearly loosing my life with a 2m beam landing on my head, the construction of the crane needs a complete overhaul. The original plan was for the loading and installation to be a one-man job, but the crane made life harder, not simpler.

After bolting the dish together, much frustration, the actual install was something different altogether. I carry a GPS, a compass, an inclinometer and a map of Elevation/Inclination/Cross Poll numbers to get the initial placement to be as accurate as possible. I looked over the fence to the neighbours and noticed a Foxtel dish on their roof. I used my big thumb to estimate the direction, did a correction by doing a rough approximation of 22.6° and turned the dish on.

I spent the next three hours trying to improve the signal.

In other words, my rough estimate had been spot on. I can get used to this.

Yangebup

Yay, we are on-line. Our biggest fear, that the wireless-gear wouldn't talk to the modem directly turned out to be a mis-informed technician. The actual set-up was quite simple, we needed to await the arrival of our newly built frame and then got down to the business of actually installing this beast the first time.

Initially, we were not getting very much in the way of any signal, until I realised that I forgot that the dish is not symmetrical and that there is an offset of 22.6°. Lowering the dish by that amount made the tuner connect without missing a beat and we could listen to the Aurora Tuning Channel beep with no problems.

Further fine-tuning got the signal maximised and the modem was switched on for the first time. The first out-going email was sent on 26 Feb 2003 at 13:19:21 - the best is yet to come.

All of the equipment associated with the connection is intended for use inside the home, the tuner for alignment, the modem, the power supply, the wireless equipment, even the video repeater. Our largest enemy is heat, so we removed the equipment from their enclosures and built them into some fire alarm warning boxes which protect them from the elements.

The boxes are bolted to the dish frame to provide a protected environment for these electronics to survive. The box fixture was changed in Barmera and again in Holwell. The initial version relied on external air to cool, six fans sucked air in and blew it out an opening on the front. This was changed in Crossing Falls.