Hi Wi-FiPlus folks,
This is Tim Ball of Fireball Info. Tech., the guy to whom you gave a
discount on three 2.4 Ghz antennae because we were trying to use the systems
for our real-time wildland fire mapping system. We have had occasion to put
the Ultra 5 dB antennas to a bit of a real world test. We have been using a
link between our ground station and the helicopter for perhaps two months.
We are pretty satisfied although we have been so busy that we really have
not been able to do the kind of detailed comparative testing that we would
like. We did however achieve a "Fire Technology First" on the fires around
San Bernardino. At one point when the fires were moving much faster than
seasoned veterans had expected and homes were being lost because priorities
were very hard to establish we flew to the critical area to map the
situation. At the same time we send a fellow with an older model IPAQ
Pocket PC to the area on the ground. This IPAQ had a simple 11b WLAN to
receive the data. It took a few tries because the older IPAQs do not sync
automatically over the network but we were in fact able to send down the map
data. As I think you folks know sending digital data over microwave from
aircraft involves horrible polarization problems because of the continuous
aircraft motion. We all felt that without the multi-polarization
capabilities of the Ultra (that was mounted on the helicopter hook-rack)
transmission of the data would have been very unlikely. Yet, the data did
go through and the Supervisor of that Division of the fire had a hard copy
map in his hand two minutes later. He re-deployed his forces and told us
that he felt that homes were saved as a result.
We are very excited about this achievement and are busy trying to quantify &
improve our ability to provide real-time digital downlinks to emergency
personnel. We will keep you posted as over the next month or so, we do some
more definitive experiments.
Thanks for your products and your help.
-tim
J. Timothy Ball, Ph.D.
Fireball Information Technologies, LLC
1240 Fairfield Ave.
Reno, NV 89509
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