Was hoping somebody could assist me or point me in the right direction. I was a member of JHB Wug for a while before moving here. I live out in Parklands and I’ve already plotted my location. It appears I have LOS to Venus (?) . I was hoping to perhaps get a test kit out to my place to do a scan and see if all will work. I will gladly supply the beers and snacks
I’ve emailed the listed contacts for the test kit and haven’t had a response. I’d like to get on the WUG again and start contributing :
)
I am sorry that your first experience on the forum has been so disappointing, but please bear in mind that it has only been 4 days since your post and WUG member do sometimes have other real life priorities that keep them busy. Most of the community would be more than happy to provide you with any assistance that they can, but sometimes it just takes a little bit of patience
Have you tried contacting the First Contact for your area yet? A list can be found at http://wiki.ctwug.za.net/First_Contacts. I suggest you do that, as they are usually the most knowledgeable person with regards to high sites in their area. They should be able to help you, or if not at least put you in contact with someone who can.
I’m sure that you will be wugging again in no time
In my honest opinion parklands and tableview is not a good area to connect to the CTwug, its taking 2 years to try and get the backbone link between norm(who is a KM member) and Venus up and running(and its still not up and running). This is due to various reasons that are all out of my control, the area itself is stagnating and not going to grow anytime soon.
Everyone seems to want to connect to venus the main highsite, where they should rather concentrate on creating backbone links between each other and gettting more links out to make the area stronger. This is an area where almost no one pitches up for general meetings and when there is an upgrade admins from deepsouth and debron goes to do the work with not one wugger that connects to venus replying that they are willing to assist.
So my my answer to you is no one cares in that area so why must admins do the effort to connect another wugger.
If we look at areas where wuggers have meetings and structures in place for example KM, Mplain, kfn and deepsouth you’ll see areas that are growing and well maintained and where new wuggers get helped a lot quicker than you have been help so far. Maybe you could prove me wrong and turn the area around once you connect(that is if you still want to connect), lastly you won’t be allowed to connect to venus with and sxt when your los distance is more than 1km.
Let us know what your scan results are and come chat to us on irc.
Thanks for the responses. it explains a whole lot now. I wish I had these sort of responses before i went out and bought the kit from Miro - now I have 2 WUG kits that are absolutely useless.
I have tried contacting the first contact months ago, got absolutely no response. My interest picked up again recently and sent a bunch of emails to all the contacts on the wiki - still no response. Thats when I registered on the forum, plotted my location and posted my first post asking for assistance and got nowhere with that.
Was out in the Miro area today and thought I’d just pop in and hear what they have to say. I didn’t plan on buying anything. The sales person said that the SXT will work perfectly and I thought I’ll just go ahead and buy it and try and get connected myself.
Will try and return the SXT, hopefully i can get refunded.
As for the other WUG kit - anybody interested in a Rb433 with 5.8ghz Grid Antenna, pigtail, wireless card, cable, enclosure etc etc?
Make a price - don’t need it and don’t really want it anymore.
Returning the sxt is your best option, what radio(wireless card) do you have? Join us on irc so we can help you setup your rb so that you can find as many ssid’s in your area as possible. I’m not the area admin but maybe I can point you in the right direction. My whatsapp number is 0818030909.
@Ogon, well said @joeyhza, try to find out who and what is going on in your area and take charge. You seem keen and intelligent enough to get a group effort going and start making the wug actually work within your Area, soon you will see the rest will catch a wake up or just fade further away, either way progress is progress. You need advice or help, i suggest you maybe join us on IRC. If thats not your cup of coffee then abuse the forums and we will try to assist where we can!!! I recon a decent link into the wug is priority no1.
Thanks for your input warlock. I got on IRC last night and sort of have a starting point moving forward. The plan is to test the SXT and see what I can pick up and what sort of signal I get. Hopefully the SXT will be ideal for my requirement. Will test ASAP and hop back on to IRC to share the results.
Venus is still a CTWUG site and it still works fine, so if you can see it in a scan, you can connect to it - before returning the SXT, do a scan and see if you can pick up the Venus sectors. I’ll help you get connected if you can.
The overall problem with the Table View/Parklands area is basically a lack of willing and able people LIVING in the area who want to be involved. To expect the committee and network admins, NONE of whom live in the area (or even close to it) to maintain and admin the area physically is unrealistic.
We have done what we could over time, upgraded Venus and the Borg backbone and we have bought the new kit for the norm backbone (which is closer to 6 months than 2 years Ogon), which just needs to be delivered to Venus now.
Without people who are willing to go through more effort than just buying an SXT and connecting it to an already established highsite (like borg or venus), the area is stagnating and it won’t get any better. More backbones (STRATEGIC) means more speed and more redundancy in the area.
The root of the problem is effectively paths like joeyhza is taking - can’t connect to a highsite, sell kit and abandon idea. Nobody wants to take the reigns and take control of the area. I’m not specifically blaming you joeyhza, but its a symptom of the root cause of the problem. If an area doesn’t have an active and willing admin living in the area, this happens.
The same was happening in Helderberg until Cafsta took the reigns and its stronger than ever now. It just takes a willing person to co-ordinate it - without that person, it falls apart!
point taken - and I fully understand. reading through a bunch of the other posts its apparent that the area needs attention. I came across a post from Norm. is he not the area admin already? I’m more than willing to participate and do what I can to uplift the area, from a WUG perspective. I guess a starting point would be good and I thought attending the next WUG meeting would be a good starting point, for me.
I don’t want to just connect and consume - I would like to contribute and participate.
@Beetle001 when I say more than two years ago I meant that is when norm started organizing a backbone link to venus, his backbone link to KM-square has been active for two years and the idea for KM to give norm the link was that venus can get another link out. I know at one point norm was mailing the clients in parklands and tableview trying to organize a meeting so that he could help expand the area.
After no one replied he has become disenchanted and abandoned the idea of helping wuggers of that area to improve their wug experience. But how lucky can the wuggers of this area be that the whole highsite has been upgraded for them because it is a CTwug owned highsite? In my honest opinion no one should be added to venus unless they can become a highsite themselves. Joeyhza already has a 433 i’m sure we can get a sector for him that’s laying around somewhere.
This area needs its own cafsta that is willing to learn to improve the area.
Hey joeyhza, let me first start by saying sorry, i have checked my e-mails again and cant seem to find anything from you.i am the first contact but cant help anybody connect to venus due to not having any access to the rb’s anymore, there was plannes to upgrade some of the area but just ran to a dead end. i am have some of my own stuff up and running and will adjust the ssid this weekend to wug spec and for everybody to see. as the end of the day the area need people to take control and nobody can do it on its own, i have been sitting on the side lines for about 2yr now and waiting for anybody to show some intrested…but still waiting
Thanks for the update Norm.
Like my previous post mentioned - I’ll gladly assist where I can. Let me know how I can help in the interim. I get home quite late in the evenings and I don’t want to get up on my roof in the dark, so I’ll only to be able to scan on Saturday morning and see what I can pick up with the SXT and I’ll also try a scan with my old grid setup too.
No problem, the first step in the process is that the rest of the wug start lending a hand the main thing is we need more backbones into the area and our options are limited i have mailed and ask a number of people for links but no responce so until we get more links into the area nothing is gonna change
I don’t think my residence has the height to host a backbone node but I wouldn’t mind being a transit node.
What are the options to get more backbone nodes though?
joeyhza i will take a look at our options. I have the ok from one of the tail buidings on the beach front to put stuff on the roof for work will maybe see if i can start a backbone relay node, but first have to see what they say
