Day 4 at Frank’s place

Fantastic sunny day again. I arrived at the workshop to find the fountain on a fork lift truck, with Marius working on electric cables:

The water jet nozzles and lights are now in place and almost wired up. Some deatials:

L: The top hole is for water control (it rains a lot in Stavanger where the EMF will be standing in November) so any water over this level runs out of the bowl. Simple, but effective.
R: The rgb light fixtures allow them to be adjusted by height, angle and rotation. Lovely!

L: The bottom view of the fountain showing the water tubes running from the pumps/solenoid valve chamber, through the mid hexagon chamber and up through holes to the jet fixtures.
R: I haven’t noticed the parabola logo before.

The fountain is moved back inside Frank’s workshop so that Marius can continue wiring.

I set up a table in the sun to test the sniffers. Though I don’t manage to get through all combinations of detectors and antenna, I do manage the following:

VLF box with large coil antenna: no response!
VLF box with small sensitive coil antenna: lovely, rich sounds, from very deep tones, to textural rushes and wooshes and clear tones when close up to wireless devices.

8318 box – 2-11 GHZ with small board antenna: clear pulsing signals, high tones
8318 box – 2-11 GHZ with large board antenna: clear signals, beats and pulses, lower tones

8318 box – 900 – 300mhz with small board antenna: very loud signals, melodious at times, lots of variation in sounds when the antenna is moved around
8318 box – 900 – 300mhz with medium board antenna: as above, but very raw and tough, heavy rockish and black metalish sounds. Fab sounds when a guy used a mobile phone about 6m away.

Question: How to protect the antennas from the elements and how to make them robust enough to stand outside, in public space for 2 weeks?

So, the wiring is not quite finished, and we’re still waiting for the relay box. Frank still needs to put the doors on the base chambers – and all this really has to be done before we can do a test.

From the sniffer tests I did today, I really have to insist on spending time to decide how to fix the antennas on the fountain. I really need to be able to adjust them, rather than them being fixed in a static position. I am going to push forward to try and get them installed in steel goose neck tubes (or an alternative), so that the public can move them too.

Had hoped to set the LAN box channels today, but it was just not possible. Tommorrow’s another day!

Advertisement