UMESH 9 and I went out doing some survey work today. First we poked around UMESH 7 and it seemed to still be suffering a bit. Checking on it proved it was happily burbling away. We did some more poking around and exchanging ideas about why we still seemed to have connectivity problems to the north. Originally, I’d blamed this on the leafing out of trees last spring. Seems to be a part of the problem, but not all of it.
Thinking more about what changed tonight, all of the sudden it hit me like a wall of bricks, because it is I think literally caused by a wall of bricks. UMESH 7 had a good view of UMESH 6 when it went up. Since then, a major school reconstruction project across the street in the direction of UMESH 6 added a large building - brick-faced - much nearer the road that is about 30’ tall! It may also obscure 7’s view of UMESH 3, although I’ve never been sure 7 and 3 are close enough to link.
Thus I’ve come to the conclusion that the solution here is in-fill development, which opens up multiple, optional routes for messages to take. We brainstormed some possible locations to help with that. In particular, we could use node hosts in locations near Florida west of Anderson St. However, we are interested in new node locations all over Urbana, drop us a line and we’ll consider your location seriously so long as it adds to or improves service.