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to improve a path
Monday, July 6 2009
Based on yesterday's weak but positive results when transmitting a 1.9 GHz DECT 6.0 antenna signal through 500 feet of conventional cable television coaxial cable, today I ran approximately 100 feet of that same cable to connect the first floor office area with the solar deck. This was the first nonstop cable of any sort strung between those two locations (though there is one non-stop CAT-3 cable connecting the solar deck to the boiler room, which lies beneath one end of the first floor office). This required boring only a single hole (between the laboratory and the teevee room), since there are existing multi-use holes between the first floor office and the teevee room and between the laboratory and the outdoors.
This time I made a proper 1.9 GHz monopole antenna, imitating the semi-fractal antenna design I'd found etched on the PC board of a disassembled DECT 6.0 handset. (I have a total of eight such handsets, though, since only six can be used with a base station at once, two are reserved for experimental use.)
You can see the 7.9 cm long DECT 6.0 antenna as etched on the circuit board (this handset is a Panasonic KX-TGA101S) and the "duplication" I made using 14 gauge copper wire, filed on one end to a point to make it so it would fit in the small hole of a female F-connector.
I plugged in this antenna to the end of the coax on the solar deck and attached the coax to the test base station in the first floor office, but unfortunately the results were clearly inferior to the results with an unmodified base station. It's possible that the base station needs two antennas a known distance apart from one another in order to do the fancy math and signal processing that results in a DECT 6.0 connection. But even though this experiment hadn't resulted in improved outdoor telephone range, I now had a cable in place for future experiments (or for an entirely different application entirely).
I wanted to replace some stones in the flat part of the path leading to the greenhouse, a stretch I'd completed hastily with inadequate materials. For this job I wanted to gather some nice big sheets of bluestone from the old quarry nearest the Stick Trail (and about a quarter mile from the greenhouse), and to do that I'd need my handtruck, a reliable household workhorse. But as I was fetching it, one of the wheels fell off. Inspecting the axle, I saw that retaining washer (which had simply been pressed over the axle, without any provision for a cotter pin) had fallen off and an essential bearing assembly had disappeared as well. I hate losing little things whose absence make big things worthless, so I found myself sweeping the yard, greenhouse grounds, and even the Stick Trail with my metal detector, hoping to find where these little steel pieces had ended up. But I found nothing, not even little things I wasn't looking for. Luckily, though, I was able to use a piece of reamed-out half inch PVC pipe as a stiff-but-functional temporary replacement for the bearing assembly. And replacement wheels were so cheap at HarborFreight.com that I bought several. My main problem when hauling back three big sheets of bluestone wasn't the improvised PVC "bearing," it was the merciless attack of mosquitoes.
These attacks continued as I installed the bluestone in the path. But once they were completed, these improvements to the path made the ordeal seem like a good investment. There are few things that so easily improve the quality of life than improvements to the comforts of a path that one walks frequently. That's something Confucius might have said had it occurred to him (and it might have and he might have).
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