<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Thanks Bart!</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 12:21 PM Bart Kus <<a href="mailto:me@bartk.us">me@bartk.us</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Better late than never!<br>
<br>
We visited Baldi instead of Rattlesnake last Saturday. Both sites were <br>
in rain, and Baldi had the easier set of tasks, so we opted for the <br>
safer option. Here's the work report:<br>
<br>
1) Baldi has had a server so old for so many years that it's RAID <br>
drivers are no longer supported by HPE for management within ESXi. It's <br>
also had very little RAM (8GB) and drive space (RAID1 of 73GB drives). <br>
I took one of my spare servers to serve as a new hypervisor up there. <br>
It has 48GB RAM and 4x250GB SSD in RAID10 (500GB space). After install, <br>
I discovered iLO had somehow lost all the credentials I saved into it. <br>
It took all of Sunday to setup a special PXE environment + OS to finally <br>
gain control of iLO from the server side (not network side). Everything <br>
here is finally working as it should, and VMs will be migrated soon so <br>
we can decommission the old server.<br>
<br>
2) The switch in "Building 2" at Baldi was full! We managed to install <br>
a new 24-port gigabit switch, pictured here: <br>
<a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/8a98D44dDxkeqJn37" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://photos.app.goo.gl/8a98D44dDxkeqJn37</a> This switch is important as <br>
it links "Building 1", and "Building 3". We also discovered the UPS <br>
powering all the repeaters and the network gear was overloaded. It <br>
would beep when things were transmitting. We re-arranged the load so <br>
that it's only backing up the network gear now, and the repeaters will <br>
need their own larger UPS.<br>
<br>
3) We installed the shield on the CampMurray facing dish. Over the last <br>
week I noticed the VPol signal on the link was really low (-94dBm) <br>
whereas the HPol was just fine (-65dBm). Prior to shield install on the <br>
dish, I inspected the connectors for any water ingress. I did not find <br>
any. However, I did find what looked like crusty build-up on the center <br>
pin of the VPol RP-SMA-to-N adapter. This adapter was re-used from the <br>
old 3ft dish. That dish had a split-open HPol connector (likely caused <br>
by ice expansion), which I suspect allowed water to pool in the feedhorn <br>
and probably drip down to this adapter, causing it to build-up whatever <br>
this grey substance is. We did our best to clean up the connector with <br>
the tools at hand. After re-installing and re-aligning the dish, VPol <br>
is now reading -84dBm instead of -94dBm. While this is a 10dB <br>
improvement, there's still clearly a problem. We need to return with a <br>
new adapter, and a method to properly clean the female N connector on <br>
the antenna to remove any residue which might still be there. Possibly <br>
re-compress the pin if it was split open too much by the residue.<br>
<br>
Another thing which might be affecting VPol is misalignment of the <br>
corresponding dish at CampMurray. That dish was never aligned with <br>
Baldi for lack of ever hearing a signal. If it's severely off-axis in <br>
the horizontal, the VPol transmission might be getting shunted by its <br>
shield (conductive vertically when azimuth is off). Both things need to <br>
be addressed before this link can be considered done.<br>
<br>
4) We had serious Ethernet link stability problems with the new <br>
Rattlesnake.Baldi dish. Its cable is routed just a few feet from an FM <br>
broadcast antenna, and several repeater antennas. We installed a 30m <br>
(100ft) run of multimode fiber to connect the Rattlenake.Baldi modem to <br>
the switch in Building 3. The link came up and has been rock solid. I <br>
also suspected there might have been water in the original RJ45 leading <br>
to these Ethernet link outages. This was inspected and the connector <br>
was found to be dry, so there's no worry of corrosion due to PoE <br>
voltage. While the cause of the CAT5 link failure is not known, I think <br>
we can narrow it down to either RFI or a bad crimp job on the tower-side <br>
connector. The shack-end connector was re-done twice with no change in <br>
link failures. Anyway, this modem is now happy with the fiber and has <br>
great signal to Rattlesnake (-55dBm)!<br>
<br>
Now let's hope for some nice weather for the next visit to Rattlesnake, <br>
which requires work at about the 150ft level of a tower.<br>
<br>
--Bart<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>