Good evening all, I have finally "made" an opportunity to update everyone on our current events. It has been so hazy and over cast here the last two weeks that we have had about a 6 mile visibility from all the towers. That don't sound to bad, but when you are making 18 mile links you start to have trouble. We are re-climbing 3 towers today to "tweak" and make connections. It got dark on us yesterday and everyone was just plain worn out from so many all day in the sun events.
We are down to our last two shelters here in N. Louisiana this morning and are expecting to move our base operations to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi on Monday. We will be bringing in bandwidth to the shelters there as well as to two Non-Profit organizations that I have been in contact with over the last 5 days. The Not for profit orgs are coordinating more shelters as well as moving in housing for the residents that have lost their homes in that area. We are preparing today for the move and are currently putting our inventory on pallets and securing it with shrink wrap. We have 2 large "covered wagons"" and one 18 wheeler trailer that we are utilizing. It will be the biggest geeky WISP convoy that I have ever seen!! We are in need of a COOK for the Bay ST. Louis, Mississippi stint as we are loosing our current cook who has 25 years (Sharon - my wife) experience in making me fat. It would be nice if the Cook could also climb towers, config numerous brand names of gear, knows Asterisk and has plenty of money. All of these attributes would be a plus, but not vital ;) Really just a good cook who actually will have other duties, Anyone available please contact me via email and I will go a little deeper in depth. Now, - - - we are in desperate need of contributions to continue this effort or we too will be eating at a shelter before long. We have been totally self sufficient thus far and haven't leaned on anyone for funding at any point. We have all spent a fortune on gasoline and not to mention anything else needed at the hdwe stores, parts houses...etc to get these folks on line and rigged out with PCs, VOIP and internet. I was wondering what kind of support we have? What does that support include? Can any one of the two organizations (WISPA or PART15) help out with money for fuel, food, bottled water, toilet paper? We have a group of approx 20 men (21 as Jim Patient counts as two hehehe) who are loading up from here and going South. We are also picking up a couple more who went home to Atlanta for a couple days, but are going to meet back up with us there in Mississippi. This group of men will be FEMA registered to enter the area and that is already taken care of. We also have had the use of a private lot donated to us to setup base camp and it has a clean concrete slab where a house use to stand. WE WILL BE ON THE GULF IN BAY ST. LOUIS - GUARANTEED. We will be updating the www.crisis.wispa.org website as well so stay tuned for more news!! ( my Paul Harvey impersonation) we have also been offered the task of getting bandwidth to a couple really prestigious places Down Town NOLA in the next week or two at the most. We have received some very nice press due to our efforts and success here. It has been a team effort and none of it would have been possible if TRANGO BROADBAND and PAC WIRELESS (to name two of many) hadn't donated their gear so easily. Thanks, Mac Dearman Maximum Access, LLC. www.inetsouth.com 318-728-8600 - Rayville 318-303-4229 318-303-4231 318-450-4349 - Monroe, La 318-303-4227 - NOC -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
