AC-EMWIN Project History

January 28th, 2003.

• 11:14 AM. Ken Allen, of the Alachua Co. Office of Emergency Management, contacted Todd Sherman, Coordinator of Alachua Co. SKYWARN, via e-mail, and advised him that John Fleming/WD4FFX of the Technical Support Unit of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, had a spare EMWIN transmitting station available. FDEM was looking for a group or agency in Florida which was willing to take on operational and maintenance responsibility of this system for the State. Ken advised that ACOEM didn't have the manpower for technical assistance or the time to handle such a system, but wondered if we would be interested in taking it on.
• 5:42 PM. Sent initial e-mail notices about the project to Ron Meder/W8MSH (ARES EC), Ed Amsbury/N4OVO (RACES EC), Ray Forrester/W4YTC (Gainesville Amateur Radio Soc.) and Jeff Capehart/W4UFL (Gator Amateur Radio Club), and to Ken Allen (ACOEM).

January 30, 2003.

Ed Amsbury/N4OVO confirms Alachua Co. RACES onboard to help out; CC's confirmation to John Fleming/WD4FFX, and Todd Sherman/KB4MHH.

February 2nd, 2003.

Scouting trip to the rooftop of the Dental Sciences Building to check out possible lcations for everything. (Click here for a mosaic photo of the location.) Present: Todd Sherman/KB4MHH, Jeff Capehart/W4UFL, Jim Carr/KC4MHH, and Penny Carr/KD4QHY.

February 5th, 2003.

• 7:00 PM. Project idea presented to Gainesville Amateur Radio Soc., during their Executive Board meeting at the Picadilly restaurant. GARS voted yes to join in on the project by providing some manpower for technical assistance to get the project set up and to keep the project running, and possibly (to be voted on at a future date if/when it actually happens) to take on expenses involved in maintenance/repair. If repair required, and the club voted to go ahead with it, and club agreed Todd Sherman/KB4MHH would handle the shipping process to and from repair facility. GARS was not anxious to get involved in any way involving expense, though.
• 7:30 PM. Project presented to the Gator Amateur Radio Club during their regular monthly meeting at the GARC club station at the Shands Dental Sciences Building. GARC voted yes to aid the project by offering space available in their clubroom, and to provide normal daily running costs, and to provide some manpower for technical assistance towards setup and operation.
• 10:00 PM. Todd sends e-mail to John Fleming advising him of both the GARS and GARC decisions on the matter.

February 7th, 2003.

• 3:00 PM. Enroute to the Orlando Hamcation, John Fleming dropped off the EMWIN equipment at the home of Todd Sherman/KB4MHH, to be stored while awaiting a later second delivery of the coax (RG-6 and 9913) required by system.
• 6:30 PM. All parties so far involved advised of the arrival of the equipment by e-mail.

February 17th, 2003.

• Installed Weathernode software on the EMWIN computer. Set up software to disseminate only those alerts relevant to Alachua County. (i.e., Severe Thunderstorm & Tornado Watches & Warnings.)

February 22, 2003.

• 5:30 PM. With Jeff Capehart/KE4NIV, dropped off all equipment except actual unassembled petals of satellite dish at Gator Amateur Radio Club club station. (Did not assemble anything, just yet.)

April 15, 2003,

• Tested power levels and SWR of GARC's ham radio AR-270B omni antenna for possible use in transmit testing. Levels acceptable.

April 18, 2003.

• 11:00 AM. Met with Bill Weltner and Bob Godwin of Physical Plant Division, and Joe DiPietro (of RF Engineers) and Brad Tyler (of Satellite Services) atop rooftop of Dental Science Bldg. to scout/plan assembly areas - especially the satellite receiver dish location. PPD did not like the idea of using an NPN mount for the satellite dish - citing possible intrusion into tar and gravel surface of roof, and water leakage concerns. So it was decided that the satellite dish could be mounted in the SW corner wall of the southern penthouse, itself.

April 19-20, and 24, 2003.

• Transmit testing.

April 25, 2003.

• Removed GARC's DB-224 rose switch antenna (unused), and replaced it with the Cushcraft PF-167 commercial EMWIN antenna (from FDEM, not owned by GARC). In attendance: Shannon Boal/KG4NGY, Jeff Capehart/W4UFL, Joe DiPietro/N2UF, Todd Sherman/KB4MHH.

April 26, 2003.

• GARS Hamfest. Set up EMWIN receive station using RealEMWIN. Test successful. 80-percent data rate.

May 4th, 2003.

• 09:00 AM: DSB Rooftop. Added four plates to transmitting antenna pole, to make it more secure against wall of penthouse. Plates were purchased by Todd Sherman/KB4MHH and were treated with special paint to prevent weatherizing of the plates. Replaced thin bolts used in pole sections to hold them up with thicker, longer bolts.

June 11, 2003.

• Installed WM software on EMWIN computer and GARC laptop.

June 12, 2003.

• Tested laptop; didn't work.

June 13, 2003.

• Fixed EMWIN computer; laptop.

June 14, 2003.

• 09:00 AM: Get Ready 2003, Oaks Mall. Tried to demo EMWIN but was unsuccessful. Walls of Mall too thick. Also too much RF noise in Mall. Also, GRU's little electrical safety demo provided even much worse noise, making any kind of demo definitely impossible.

June 18, 2003.

• Left WxMesg running on GARS laptop during club meeting to demo EMWIN.

June 20, 2003

• Shipment containing 200' of 9913 coax, Polyphasor lightning arrestor, and 4 PL-259 connectors finally arrived today from John Fleming.

June 28-29, 2003.

• 14:00 to 14:00 - Left WxMesg running on GARS laptop to demo EMWIN. Successful demonstration. Received signals and displayed bulletins and alerts.

July 8, 2003.

• GARC club table set up on Reitz Union lawn to try to recruit members. During this, GARS laptop was set up running WxMesg to demo EMWIN. Program ran fine, but sunlight was too bright for adequate viewing of low-light-level laptop display.

July 16, 2003.

• Moved all NWS products from AFN to EMWIN computer hard drive. Redirected AFN pointers to GARC site to view products. FINALLY, everything seems to be working perfectly on the EMWIN computer. For past month, have been having problems FTPing to AFN, and in some cases, getting out e-mails and pages. After spending many long days and hours over the past month adjusting, correcting and debugging, things finally seem to be coming together. Everything working smoothly, like clockwork, now. Can now move on to other EMWIN matters/projects.

September 19, 2003 - 8:30am to 5:30pm.

Participants: Shannon Boal/K4GLM, Jeff Capehart/W4UFL, Joe DiPietro/N2UF, Todd Sherman/KB4MHH, Brad Tyler/K4LDX.

• Installed EMWIN satellite receiver dish.
• Grounded dish per instructions of PPD.
• Routed coax into club station, and neatened up existing coax lines into club station (per instructions of PPD).
• Tested WM Serial Ingest Engine. Test failed with buffer overflow. Have some debugging to do. Computer refused to reboot properly a number of times, then came back up, luckily. Removed Serial Ingest Engine from Startup and left computer in previous Internet Ingest mode, for now.

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