Filled the back seat with computers, test equipment, printers, and gear... then loaded some more shit into the bed.

Stop by the equipment depot for dishes/totes with more gear... then over the continental divide around first light, and find some dirt.

New desktop pic at work for a while...

Got up to the site and unloaded.
Dish and radio to site-3 installed, the easy one. Can see the other peak from the ground, easy to identify with clear LoS.
See how the tie-down on my grunt bag is horizontal? Yeah, it was windy.


Get the rest of my shit together for the other shot further up the tower

"Yeah, i'm going to need another set of hands up here". This wind is kicking my ass wrestling the dish onto the mount.

Just enough of a saddle on the ridge to shoot over the trees back to site-1. With the additional cross-bracing on the upper portion of the tower, mounting the dish and radio was challenging.

Ended up mounting the radio on the dish bracket, but it was in such a way I couldn't see the link and signal lights on the radio. Going higher put me closer to the FM antenna with 300W going into it than I wanted to be, and going above those antennas are problematic - end up with a lot of common-mode noise in the shielded network cable, the router usually negotiates down to 10mbit for a better connection. The "right way" to fix that is run power up to the radio on its own cable, then feed the radio with data on a fiber run.

Could not get a reliable link on the shot to site-1. This link brings in IP not just to this site, but also sites 3 and 4. So if it's not up, it's not just the build I'm on that fails, but everything else down the line. Why do I always get these no-fail jobs.


Other guys had to take off, senior techs were on their way over here from site-3. Monch on some food, down a couple gatorades/waters, and wait about an hour and a half. 11k ft is serious business. There's a little space behind the building on the right, between it and a retaining wall, where I could piss out of the wind.


Other techs arrived, gear up, grab binos and a rope, start the ascent. Ended up moving the dish to the other rung (with experience and skill comes speed - they had some ideas that I wouldn't have thought of to make that work much easier/faster), but still couldn't get a reliable link.

Tech on the tower radios down "I know what's wrong, we're done here". Button things up... turns out the shot he installed at site-1 to here, he pointed at a different mountain.

Didn't plan on watching the sunset up here... 11hrs makes for a long day, and it's still windy as fuck.

We all headed down the mountain... they went over to site-1 (easy access/drive, and a real easy climb on a low tower) to get the link up, and I headed over to Steamboat to crash at a buddy's place. Don't use that light bar on the front much, but it's nice to have.


Next morning... "Meet you at the shop?" Yup, see ya there. Fill out some paperwork...

Pups heard something about a ride...


All loaded up, 3hr drive back to the house and get the truck emptied out.

Today the truck's staying in the driveway. The Austrian mistress and I need to get acquainted.

