Raise the Roof

I read an email earlier this week with a little dismay - my friend Dan, a Network Technician from one of our subordinate battalions, said that a radio link they were trying to put in wasn't going to work from where it currently stood. Radios like the ones they were trying to put up are aptly called "Line of Sight" because, of course, they need a direct line of sight between antennas to work. Normally, this isn't a problem until you hit the curvature of the Earth in a flat place like this, but we are in enough of a built-up area that we have to deal with buildings, parapets, man-made hills, trees, and even other people's antennas!

Dan pointed out that we have an antenna to another site on top of the Al Faw Palace (the one in the news when people visit Victory) - why not add another one? After a slew of emails probing for how much trouble we would get into for asking, we discovered that no one really cares what is up there, as long as it doesn't conflict with other stuff already there - wow. That led to a site recon :)

To get to the roof, you have to go to the third floor of the palace, then find the secluded utility access stairs:


I should have taken a picture of the ventilation level of the palace - it is a labyrinth of air ducts, air conditioning equipment, leaking pipes, shadowy movement (rats? lizards? dogs?), and lots of unmarked doors.

We made it outside after a while to something OSHA would have a field day with:


It may be hard to see, but that ladder is at an angle, and the steps are all painted metal. Nothing but the best for the palace!

We wove through antenna after antenna - not just dishes, but all kinds, a lot of which I could not identify on sight (not that I am an expert in antennas; still, some of those looked alien!).


Finally, we reached the "spot":


The flat thing pointing off in the distance is exactly what we needed to see, along with a lot of unused real estate. This is perfect for as many new ones as we have!

Of course, what's a trip to the top of a 25-30 meter tall building without a picture of the view?

Skypefeast!

I got to Skype with Matt today!!

At last, the stars aligned, and I was able to get my dad, Loretta, and Matt over to Loretta and Matt's place for a somewhat choppy Skype session. We resolved to meet around noon their time, 10 PM my time, and though it connected, it was pretty much unusable. We postponed for a couple hours, and at 2 PM their time, midnight my time, it worked considerably better. It is still not very good quality, but even video that updates once every couple of seconds is fine with me. I can also hear them just fine, but apparently my voice isn't getting through, so I resorted to typing what I wanted to say, and just listening the other way around. Not perfect, but it's a start!

I also got a headset for the XBox in the mail from my brother, and we were able to talk via XBox Live, which is really intended to set up gamers with each other to play games. It just so happens that being able to talk to each other was a valuable enough feature that it is included, and my roommate has an XBox 360 he barely uses now that he's beaten the only 2 games he brought with him.

Chasing the Jackal

I can Skype.

I've actually waited about four months to say that! I finally got an antenna rig for the one ISP on Camp Victory, "Jackal", that allows you to use programs like Skype, BitTorrent, online gaming, and some other less savory yet high-demand online services. The one that I had been using, "Magic Island" or "MIT" (Magic Island Technologies), worked much like you might use a hotspot in a Starbucks - they have wireless access points all over the place, and if you are close enough to one, you connect, pay, and surf. The trouble is, MIT is in bed with the military, and it polices what you do on the network. In the case of the less savory things you can do online, it is to be expected, but they also cut off Skype, gaming, and other fairly benign things in the name of security and conservation of bandwidth. Despite this odious policy, since you don't need a crazy antenna to get their service, they get a lot of users who aren't willing to go on an epic quest to connect.

The antennas are available as they come into country, and you have to sign up with Jackal before they will order one. For $150 ($75 deposit, $75 for the antenna to keep as long as you need), you get on a waiting list that is at least a month long. When it comes in, you have to find some kind of mast, pole, or long piece of wood to mount it on, then set it up to point to one of several Jackal motherships. I was able to get one secondhand for $100 (but it's not eligible to be returned for its deposit ...), complete with a sturdy metal mast and a fairly long cable. I thought the guy who sold it to me lived only a couple housing units down from mine, so I asked my roommate Bob to pick it up for me on his day off - the guy selling it was trying to get out of Dodge quick (no pun intended - I live in a housing area called "Dodge City North"). It turned out he lived more like 20 housing units away. It'll take a few more weeks to live that one down.

Hopefully I can start getting into the weekly Skype routine everyone has been running for several months now!

Of course, pictures always help ... here are some of the install:

This is the antenna itself, known as a "Subscriber Unit" (it's WiMax technology). The guy who sold it to me gave me the metal pipe it is attached to as well.

We set it up to lean against the 12-foot concrete walls that surround our housing unit (bottom right). I used nylon cord to attach it to the concrete wall; there are a couple of rebar loops built into the wall to allow forklifts to manipulate it.

There wasn't much room between the wall and the housing unit for me, let alone the ladder ... oh well, war is hell.

Bob, watching me risk my life on the ladder from the ground, still not amused about having to carry the immense metal pole a quarter mile (or more)!

That's it! We ran the cord from the wall (in the background) to our window, and we got unrestricted Internet!

Tech Savvy

Well dad, I know you had every hope of being the first tech-teacher for Matt. But it seems that Uncle Chuck has beat you to the punch. Cheekfeast now has his own gmail address and skype account (actually that's even more tech savvy than Chuck).

Matt helped Uncle Chuck build his own desk and set-up his own computer. Granted it is an OLD computer (I mean OLD) but it is perfect for skyping with mom. We did a little test run with Autumn but we didn't have speakers so unfortunately she got to hear us but we couldn't hear her. It was a little awkward... Next we'll try a gmail video with dad!