[MLB-WIRELESS] Trafalgar wireless project

[sandbar]

Ey people,
Trafalgar is a small town along the Princes Highway about 113km east of 
Melbourne, population 2200. Telstra has said it is willing to enable the 
town's exchange for DSL if 200 people sign up for it. Bad.
Trafalgar's council offices has a mast-mounted 24dBi Hills antenna 
sitting about 30m off the ground. It was used to connect the council 
with its offices in Warragul, about 13km away, but is now disused. It 
has a c.20m run of inch-thick heliax that terminates to an n-type 
connector inside the building. Good.
Baw Baw Shire Council is willing to allow public access to the antenna, 
and house the hardware to run an access point for both local access and 
a back-haul link to Warragul. Very good.
My initial thoughts are that one Linux box would be able to handle both 
local access via an 8dBi omni mounted on the 24dBi antenna's mast above 
the roof line to serve the Traf community, and the back-haul link to 
Warragul where a similar set-up is possible. This means we'd need an 
8dBi omni, and a mast-mounted AP using PoE.
Council's estimate at this stage is that about 25 people in Traf will 
use the service, although not all at once.
Any coments or suggestions? I mentioned to council's representative that 
Melbourne Wireless members would never knock back a free snag, beer, and 
wireless pwn, and would more than likely help with an install if a day 
was arranged. Council has even said it will cough up the c.$3k for a 
crane to come in to haul a fearless member of the wireless community up 
to the top of the mast to tweak the gear. Don't get opprtunities like 
that every week, ey?
- Barry

-- 
barry park
http://wireless.bur.st | wireless project page
http://warragul.wireless.org.au | community wireless
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