Black Mountain
Site located off the Black Mountain Trail near the Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve in the Los Altos Hills (map)(photos)
Road to the site is private and closed by a padlocked gate. The secure area at the site is managed by Crown Castle using a timed bluetooth enabled key dropbox. There are a number of tower up at Black Mountain:
- Site 1 - An old abandoned tower possibly still owned by Stanford University. Previously the site of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club (W6YX) repeater and Stanford's Instruction TV.
- Site 2 - Commercial site, but with a small HAM building.
- Site 3 - FAA
- Site 4 - The BAY-NET tower where AREDN is located
- Site 5 - WB6ECE Repeater Group
Site 1 is at the highest point.
Site Details
Configuration
Black Mountain hosts a Mikrotik hAP, a Ubiquiti PowerBeam and a Ubiquiti Rocket M5 XW with 120 degree sector. WAN access to the hAP is on 44net, provide by a non-AREDN related switch managed by KI6ZHD.
Device wiring runs through independently power PoE injectors, then to lightning arrestors, and finally out to the devices on the tower.
| VLAN | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | AREDN WAN |
| 2 | AREDN DtD |
| Port | Description | VLANs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WAN | - | To 44net on non-AREDN related switch |
| 2 | LAN | Unused and taped over | |
| 3 | LAN | Unused and taped over | |
| 4 | N9JIM-PBE2 | 2 | A custom change on this device has reconfigured this port to be an addition DtD |
| 5 | N9JIM-BlackMtn | 2 |
Notes
- N9JIM-PBE2's radio is currently disabled. This was used to connect the site, via the node at Facebook Menlo Park, to the rest of the mesh. Facebook is down for the foreseeable future. Currently this site is only connect to the mesh via tunnels [5th March, 2023]
Nodes
N9JIM-BlackMtn
Radio: Ubiquiti Rocket M5 XW
Antenna: 120° sector
Location: 37.3201632, -122.1437596
Altitude: 850m
Bearing: 55° toward Sunnyvale
N9JIM-PBE2
Radio: Ubiquiti PowerBeam M5 XW 300
Antenna: Built in 22 dBi
Location: 37.32020, -122.14382
Altitude: 826m
Bearing: 356° toward Facebook Menlo Park
N9JIM-HAP1
Radio: MikroTik hAP ac lite
Antenna: -
Location: 37.3201632, -122.1437596
Altitude: -
Bearing: -
Commercial Neighbors
Etheric Networks
The local WISP in this area is Etheric. They license (WQMK876) spectrum in the 6.2 GHz, 10.5 GHz and 19.5 GHz regions.
Contacts
Site Admin
- David Ranch - KI6ZHD - sfwem@trinnet.net
Mesh Admin
- Jim Moss - N9JIM - n9jim@pacbell.net