Hi Jersey,
This is very interesting, beacuse I have a similar problem that I need
to solve in Indonesia - we should pool our resources!
We are working on a rain-forest project on the Island of Seram - help
local people protect their rare and endangored bird species by
encouraging bird-watching type tourism.
Anyway the village where we are operating is about 150km away from the
nearest town with phone connections and there is a 3000m mountain in
the way. I have been working with a local ham radio operator there to
try and get his setup going (his radio died about a year ago).
What we have decided to do, is have a computer in the nearest town
running Linux which will dial up the local ISP and upload and download
any email. Then another computer in the village will, using the radio
link, contact the one in the town and pick up the email from there.
On asking around, I have come up with two suggestions as to how to get
the radio link to work:-
1) Use VHF frequencies (e.g. 2m band) and put a passive repeater (two
yagi antennas connected together) up on this high mountain. However we
are not sure this will work due to the abundance of vegetation (not to
mention the three day jungle bash to get to the top). Then using AX.25
to transfer the signal between the computers.
2) Use an HF radio and then use the PACTOR protocol. This has been
very successfuly used in Africa before, however the equipment seems to
be quite expensive (around US$3000 for each station - we would have to
get two), so *may* be out of our budget.
I am trying to think of a way to start off with a cheaper system and
slowly improve it rather than having to do a big outlay at the
beginning. I am also concerned about buying a lot of gear and then
finding out a month later when we finally get it to Seram, that it
doesn't work due to some local radio wierdness.
Any information you come up with would be extremely helpful.
Damian
J.M. "Jersey" Miszczyk wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I live in South Africa and very often go "into Africa". There is no
> telephone connections in the bush :((. And distances to the nearest
> "civilised" places are often measured in hundreds of kilometers. Email
> sometimes would be very handy. I know that there are satellite phones on
> the market but.... the price is quite high, specialy taking our exchange
> rates into consideration.
> Is there a way of utilising ham satellites? My company is an Internet
> service provider as well and I would not have a problem with setting up "a
> satellite Internet router" or "a satellite Email box" which could be
> utilised by others as well. Btw... Linux is the preferred operating system
> :))
> If it is possible, I would appreciate some initial guidance.... I learn
> very fast :))).
> If this is not possible.... well I do not easily take no for an answer
> :))). I will look for some other means of distance communications..... I
> already eliminated tam-tams..... baud rate is quite low :)))))).
> I would like to apologise if this subject was already handled on this
> forum. I did not have much time to browse through the historic data. I got
> the whole idea few days ago during my scuba trip to Mozambique. Beautifull
> country :))) but..... nonexistent or very basic communication
> infrastructure :(((.
>
> Best regards
> "Jersey"
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