Category Archives: Uncategorized

How far away can some random city in Wisconsin be? I live about nine air miles from the border. I saw this one on the Hansen Auction site- bit rusty. Bad generator- not news. Lobbed in a crazy lowball bid. Then decided to study the photos. The little toggle /clamp in the two inch ballContinue reading “Bumblebee #15”

I’ve lost track of how many tower trailers we have. N0NAS did suggest placing low bids and walking away. I did this twice last week and have two new to us rigs in my driveway. Lucky is a Terex RL4000, similar to the excellent Terex RL4 I already have. The idea was a matched pair,Continue reading “Lucky #14”

ARRL Field day is an exercise for emergency communications, and a fun contest for ham radio operators. Most clubs use software, like N3FJP to handle logging from multiple locations at the same time. This presents the need for a network to connect the server to the clients. Having done this many times in many differentContinue reading “Getting Internet access and N3FJP Logging configured at your ARRL Field Day site”

ARRL Field Day 2021 is upon us, and we are listening carefully to the various planners. The tower trailers are popular in two roles- towers and generators. Beams are a nice add on for station planners and a 30+ foot place to hang a dipole- why not. Light towers have accessory outlets, and 15-20A 120VContinue reading “240V AC Power Distribution and Field Day”

The supply of running older used tower trailers at auction continues to be good so I keep adding new ones. Several of the older or non conforming ones were sold. I am trying to standardize. Every one is 30′ now and diesel. The concept is to generally deploy with pairs of similar looking diesels. SoContinue reading “Fleet Rebalancing”

Locally here, we’re on a multi-day 90 degree or higher weather marathon. So what does that do to electronics, like Rasberry Pi devices in your outdoor tower trailers? Good question…. Well, our batteries are getting pretty well charged in the sun. This time of year, the solar panels can run mesh and small computers 24/7Continue reading “Baking Electronics”

Doug, N0NAS who has been a long time mostly remote collaborator on the tower trailer project gave up trying to convince me to not buy any more of them in March, 2021. The argument was “we don’t use them”- however they get used all the time. They have been to Hams in The Park (+Continue reading “Ham Tower Generator Trailer #13, Tango X-ray (TX)”

Right after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about dirty bomb attacks. The idea was bad actors would get their hands on some radioactive material, and mix it with conventional explosives. This would cause panic and people to flee, potentially in large numbers.Continue reading “AX.25 Minnesota Statewide Packet Radio 145.670”

Years ago we standardized on Ubiquiti radios for our mesh work. That was a good decision. I prefer 5G vs 2G as it is in our experience far less congested. We picked channel 157. They are lovely, and the older models (use the HP = High Power ones, the really really old ones do not)Continue reading “Amateur Mesh Radios”

We are starting to think about Amateur Radio/ARRL Field Day June 25/26/21. And “asset packages” for MNVOAD deployments. Each of these would call for dual 6KW or more diesel generators parked 50′ away -feeding 240V heavy gauge power cables to distribution points. We have just one 240VAC capable trailer now- and need a second one.Continue reading “Trailer #12 – “Yoda” 2013 Wacker LTN6L”