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McClellan Peak: A Father's Day Install and a Neighbor List Mystery

· 5 min read
Ben Allfree
Ben Allfree
MeshEnvy Founder

McClellan Peak rises in the Virginia Range above the Comstock country, and yesterday Willow and I went up together to get a node on the air at Dave Metts's High Sierra Communications site. We had a Father's Day epic in mind: this install plus two more sites before the sun went down. The peak had other ideas.

Ben in a sun hoodie at the High Sierra Communications compound on McClellan Peak, T-stake node mount on the fence behind him

Sun hoodie and the Jeep's to-do list​

I tried out a new sun hoodie on the summit. It provided good coverage against the high-altitude sun, which matters on an exposed Nevada crest. On a windy peak, though, a hoodie is only as good as its cinch. Mine could not tighten down enough, so the hood kept flapping and fighting the wind. Sun protection passed. Wind management failed. I will shop for one with a proper drawcord before the next windy install.

The Jeep's rear differential is still leaking from the Toulon trip, and that gets worked on in a few days. I also finally located a knocking sound that had been vexing me for weeks. It turned out to be a loose strut. Not something I could fix roadside, but something to add to the list when the Jeep goes in for the differential.

I can justify bumping back down a mountain on a broken strut. Knowingly heading up another peak that way is just asking for the universe to have some fun with me.

Silver Jeep Wrangler at the McClellan Peak radio compound with tailgate open and gear in back

Dave's site and the T-stake mount​

We found Dave's radio site on McClellan and did the traditional perimeter walk. McClellan is loaded with radio infrastructure, microwave relays, and the kind of compound where you want to know exactly where you are allowed to be before you mount anything.

We picked a choice fence pole and went to work. I had no ladder, and the pole was taller than I could reach on my own. So I did what we do on a lot of early installs. I used a six-foot T-stake as a mast and hose-clamped it to the pole to gain the height I could not get with my boots on the ground. Inside the team we call builds like this jank nodes. The mount looks scrappy and it is built with intention. Get the node up, learn what the site can do, improve from there.

MeshCore node on a T-stake mast hose-clamped to a fence pole at the McClellan Peak compound

The node went on the air. That part of the mission worked.

Lattice towers and the T-stake node mount looking up from the McClellan Peak fence line

The neighbor list mystery​

We were about to leave when I ran final neighbor checks and noticed something wrong. The node was not detecting any neighbor sites. Given McClellan's location and the number of repeaters already on that crest, I knew at least some other backbone nodes had to be within range. The neighbor list showed nothing.

That turned into about three more hours of testing on the summit. The node could communicate bidirectionally with other repeaters when I pushed it. Messages went through. Links worked. They just would not appear on the neighbor list.

My best hypothesis is that the latest MeshCore firmware may have a neighbor-finding problem. Either something changed in a recent release, or I am a very confused person. I could not settle it on the mountain, and I had already burned the Father's Day schedule.

What I could rule out mattered more in the moment. McClellan hosts many radio sites, and my main concern was RF interference from the crowd of existing infrastructure. As best I can tell, it is not an interference issue. If it is not hardware, it is software, and I can live with that until we get a fix or a clearer answer.

That mystery waits for another day. The node is on the air at a site that earns its keep on the Virginia Range crest.

Virginia City and calling it a day​

Willow and I took Ophir Grade back to civilization and landed in Virginia City. After the bumpy road and three hours of unexpected troubleshooting, our adrenaline was fully dumped. We settled for pizza and staring off into space instead of continuing the Father's Day planting run. Two more sites would have to wait.

It was probably for the best. We got one summit node deployed, learned something about firmware behavior, and did not push a Jeep with a loose strut into terrain that punishes bad decisions. Some days the mesh wins even when the checklist does not.

Thanks​

High Sierra Communications logoBLM Carson Field Office logo

Thanks again to Dave Metts and High Sierra Communications, and to the Bureau of Land Management, for continuing to open Nevada summits to community backbone work. McClellan Peak is another crest in the Comstock country with a live node on it, and we will keep testing until the neighbor list catches up to what the radios already know.