All,
Talking with Charles at the Texarkana mini-fest yesterday, he is buried trying to get a new tower up. He hasn’t been able to model the lat/longs we have developed and I am sensitive to that. Being buried and not having enough time. So, if anyone else wants to try it please drop me a note or call me and we can point you to the site to generate the map.
At the Texarkana mini-fest Cliff periodically took his Meshtastic handheld out and looked at the numbers. I think he said he saw six nodes. He successfully texted a couple of them as a test.
When I left the mini-fest I went to Paris and took the opportunity to drive the full loop and do a survey. Initial modeling informs me that with a node at the Lamar County Courthouse and a very few sprinkled at Club member homes inside the loop, we will have the loop interior covered. My next ring would ideally be places literally just outside of the loop, circling the whole city.
I don’t know what some of the places are (who owns them, the specific address, etc.), but I took pictures from the loop and got reasonably close to get a lat/long for plugging into the model. Generally, the places (starting at Home Depot and going west) were Home 2 Suites by Hilton (4-5 stories), Paris Regional Medical Center (4-5 stories), Campbell Soup, Drake Construction (2-3 stories), We Pack Logistics (2-story tall warehouse), Casey’s (gas station/convenience store, tall one-story building and covered pumps with the covers being probably 25′ high), VISTRA Lamar Power Plant, RK Hall (looks like a Ready Mix plant), Paris High School (Inside the loop, but only maybe 300′ from the loop and that area is pretty sparse. The centerpiece of the building is like 3-4 stories high.), two structures that look like maybe they are Ready Mix plants (one with a Cedarapids sign and the other with ASTEC painted on their structure), Covenant Christian Church (not terribly tall, but they have light standards in the parking lot that Kathy and my 28′ extension ladder would easily work with and that area is also sparse). As I did the drive I also noticed what are probably City of Paris, or TXDOT, lights. Those dudes are probably 50’+ tall, maybe 100′, and the kind where the lights can be raised and lowered. If we don’t have good modeling after we plug all these others in, those things would be a game changer if we could get the owner to have their crews put a node on one or more of those. I will include some pictures:
Like I said, we could use someone to help with inputting lat/longs so we can generate a propagation model of the locations under consideration. If you are willing to spend some time helping us with that, please get in touch with me.
73
Phillip Beall (W5EBC)