Fox Mountain

I was exhausted after several days of working the Reno backbone out to Gerlach and the Black Rock Desert, and I wanted to go home. One of my goals for the trip was range testing from Fox Mountain to see what coverage gaps a node there could close. I had been exploring around Soldier Meadows and playing around in the Jeep doing range tests out that way when onX Offroad told me I could get to Fox Mountain from where I was. It might even be true. Sometimes it sends me down the worst roads just because they are the shortest path on paper.

The road not taken

onX eventually routed me down roads so untraveled that the path barely existed. The sun was going down. I was not going to reach Fox Mountain during daylight, and I was concerned I might not get there at all if I kept pushing into unexplored roads in the dark. I pivoted back toward Gerlach, a little defeated and ready for a good night's sleep. I thought I might save Fox Mountain for another trip.

In the morning I woke up refreshed and determined. I still wanted to know what kind of range we could get from that summit. I planned the route fresh and drove up to Fox Mountain.

Above the smoke

Fox Mountain is a beautiful summit and a beautiful drive. I had to pass through a layer of wildfire smoke on the way up, and then I was above it at the top. There is a lot of radio equipment on the peak, including gear from partners and prospective partners.

It is slowly becoming confirmed through empirical data that co-locating on a radio tower is not always the best option, even when the option is available. The problem comes down to ideal placement, not proximity to steel.

Five feet makes the difference

My preferred method of range checking during site selection is simple. Start with a partner site and a tower, but do not assume that locating on the tower is automatically the best option.

I walked around on the peak holding a repeater in my hand and continuously testing for connection to our other repeaters in the area. In some cases I could move five or ten feet and improve the signal connection a lot, or lose it entirely. Terrain, antenna orientation, and what the ridge blocks matter more than elevation alone.

After some searching I found a spot with an ideal connection back to Poito Mountain, about forty miles away. Unbelievably, it even had intermittent connectivity to Toulon Peak, more than seventy-five miles away.

That is the onX measurement for that hop. Seventy-six point four miles across the basin, from roughly eight thousand feet down toward the Trinity Range and back up again. On paper the path looks impossible until you are standing in the one place on the ridge where the geometry works.

It is mind blowing to me how big a difference a well placed repeater can be from a casually placed one. A few steps sideways on a summit can open links the tower compound never sees.

Playa mud

After Fox Mountain I took the Jeep for a joyride on the playa on the way back toward Gerlach. That was a mistake. Near the south end the surface got soft enough that I almost bogged out. I had to turn around without losing momentum just to bail out of the soft playa before it swallowed the tires.

We picked up a lot of mud. Thick alkaline playa mud that clings to everything and does not want to let go.

Two car washes later it is still not really gone.

A tool for the next climb

I am going to start working on a real-time tool to support this evaluation process. Walk around on a peak, ping repeaters in real time, and let the tool remember the optimal locations. It is fun going out into the field and coming back with new ideas for tools that would help improve the public mesh.

More field data beats more assumptions. Fox Mountain is another reminder that the best mount on a partner site is not always the obvious one.