The southern face of the tower is cluttered with FabFi

Day 2 on the ground warranted a visit to the tower where we found several more FabFi had cropped up. It’s getting sufficiently crowded that we need to consider semi-omni-directional antennae and multiple downstream connections on each reflector on the tower.

FF2.0 hardware upgrade includes a snazzy acrylic box to weatherproof the router.

The sun set halfway through our upgrades. FF2.0 software upgrade includes full meshing and allows multiple uplinks in the mesh.

The technical details are at fabfiblog.fabfolk.com; the summary is that with FF2.0 meshing update, the antennae no longer need to work as dedicated pairs. We can simply install 360-degrees of FabFi on the tower and allow those FF to mesh with each other. A wider beam (ie, more open parabola) would allow us to use fewer reflectors - technically reducing the linkable distance, but since Jbad is only about 5km wide in total we’re not pushing our abilities.

With Abu's (Ghana) help, Talwar cut out this large FF reflector by himself on the shopbot in Pune. Said Jalal and Hedayat staple on the window screen in Jalalabad. This will be the new north side large FF.

Logan and a large FF on the north face of the tower. Logan and Said Jalal managed to find a rickshaw driver who drives like Baba Tim to take them to the market to fetch some rope. The large reflectors don't fit up the stairwell and are hauled hand-over-hand via rope up the side of the tower.

The elements are not kind to the equipment, but there's still green lights across the board.

This reflector was installed in May 2009. When I touched the plastic after taking this photo, the plastic crumbled and fell away in tiny pieces which were immediately carried away by the wind.

Tim’s son Logan is super eager to help, which is fortunate because we’re all kind of lazy (or lazy and sick, in the case of Smari and Carl). Logan is pretty tall by my standards, probably 6′1″, but that makes him the second or third shortest of the crew on this trip. Weird but true.

Logan the Nuristani taking his load of FabFi to market.

As far as I can tell, Logan will carry anything from place to place whether it’s antennae, UPSes (those things are heavy!), or large boxes precariously overflowing and somewhat taped “closed”. Maybe varsity crew has his brain pre-conditioned for this kind of thing.

Smari and Nels upgrade the downlink at the hospital administration building.

Keith is trapped by FabFi's on the southeast corner of the tower.