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We will be bringing down the Bear Mountain site on Tuesday night from about 9pm till 1am for the purpose of replacing the failed south sector radio. All equipment is burned in, so we hope to avoid any early equipment failures from using out of the box equipment. Full capacity operation from this site is expected after the maintenance work. In fact, on the 2Ghz side the new equipment is now 50% stronger and at the legal limit. This should provide improved signal quality, and an improved Internet experience for some customers. ;-)
2 Lightning Storms Hit us 4 times
A very unusual stationary low pressure system produced persistent slow moving thunderstorms in the Chelan area. Two Lightning storms caused damage to multiple parts and systems in the rabbitmeadows network. Bear Mountain was hit twice while another two locations were hit as well. In our eight years of service, we have only seen one possible lightning related damage before these storms came through!!
July 31st about 5pm
One powerful lightning bolt struck near our tower on Bear Mountain. This particular site is one of our busiest sites serving the greater Manson area and some Union Valley customers. This site feeds our uplake site that serves Greens Landing, and Kelly's Resort area as well. On my initial trip to the site, that night it appeared that the UPS power supply was tripped off, and I reset it.
In hindsight, it is clear that this storm caused a small relay system on Howard Flats to go offline, as we now have reports of a lightning strike within a couple hundred yards.
Aug 1-2
The next trip Sunday morning the damage was clear: 3 power supplies, 3 router/computers, and 6 microwave radios were all destroyed and non functioning! Of all this, two computers and radios were not on the tower (ground locations).
This level of destruction outstripped our supply of normal spares on hand. This complex site was re-engineered with all routers on the ground, and more cables up the tower to power independent radio units. A team was assembled and we got the tower down, reconfigured, and raised by Sunday night. By Monday morning at 11am the new system was configured and functioning, however there were still some individual customer issues.
I consulted with others in the industry and found the equipment used for some of the replacement radios would produce a weaker than expected signal when using the external antenna. I promptly ordered different gear overnight to address the low signal issue affecting some customers.
Aug 3 -not again!
Tuesday was not good. There was a fire at Navarre Coulee that was potentially threatening our home/office. That fire was contained by good helicopter support and the thunderstorm that followed in the afternoon/evening.
The thunderstorm produced even more lightning strikes in the area. Our home/office was struck and after our initial shock, more damage became clear. 3 microwave radios, one router computer and several switches were destroyed along with a cell phone amplifier.
Meanwhile, back at the Bear Mountain site there were multiple strikes. A resident reported a 5 foot spark inside a nearby home. This time the damage was not as severe, but some radios on the tower were damaged.
Aug 4
New radios arrived. We took down the tower again in the evening from 9-midnight. The new gear was functioning by morning the next day.
Aug 5
As part of the re-engineering of the Bear Mountain site, I needed to re-configure a small relay that serves a couple customers up to Fields point. Arriving at this uplake site, we found a power problem from and accidental construction dig. This prevented the work.
Sometime in the afternoon around 3pm, one of the "new" radios that served the south direction from Bear Mountain quit responding. This meant that a handful of customers were now getting weak signals again because they were connecting to an antenna pointing the wrong direction (North).
Aug 6
When we originally upgraded the Bear Mountain site about 3 and a half years ago, all the equipment was assembled, tested, and burned in for a week before ever leaving the lab. The previous day's failure was simply an early failure, but unfortunately one on top of the tower!
Worked and installed a temporary solution for the south sector. I ran a temporary cable to the original site location where we had mounted antennas before the tower was erected. This cable and ground based location would pickup the south customers until the 3rd tower work project was planned.
Aug 7
Power was restored to the new uplake site serving Field's point. My trip there to re-configure equipment was successful after a few circuit breaker glitches. Worked on Howard Flats relay for the second time today as well.
