Forward Operating Base In-a-Can

[Another Ahab]

Thread's drifting, let's pull it in...

 

[tim292stro]

10x20 canopy arrived tonight - another box-in-bed-picture:



It's a little heavier than I would have liked (75lbs), but the frame is heavier steel rather than the flimsy aluminum ones. Also the cover/top is a nylon fabric - I'm going to replace it with temper-tent vinyl for the tan on black backing variety - it should last longer and be a little more water proof than the nylon.

This is roughly what I bought:

 

[tim292stro]

Wow, almost a month since my last post to this... Holidays, and I got hit with a case of Strep Throat. Yeah, happy new year to me...

Well on a lighter note, I'm haggling with a guy who has my last two tents, and I'm going to try to get an HDT 103, and two rapid entry vestibules in the deal. Can't say who or where, don't want to sour it or add on competition to my haggling. I saw a bunch of base-X tents went on GovLiq recently, but with the holidays hitting my pocket book , I couldn't swing it...

The wife is starting to complain about the piles of parts in the apartment, so I'm going to have to tie off some of the ToughBook things and get them stuffed in their Hardigg case and put in storage if I want to keep the other half at bay.

 

[srodocker]

Im about ready to build mine soon! Cant wait to see some more posts from you.

 

[Another Ahab]

The wife is starting to complain about the piles of parts in the apartment, so I'm going to have to tie off some of the ToughBook things and get them stuffed in their Hardigg case and put in storage if I want to keep the other half at bay.

 

[tim292stro]

For the record, the wife would like acknowledged:

"...I have been a very patient wife. I have tollerated the Bus, the Toyota pick-up, the servers, the workstations, long hours away at work, the XM1027 project, giving up on hobbies I liked, you..."

So I think my interest in keeping her happy by getting those ToughBooks tied off and stored shows I am still willing to try to live WITH her. She has been trooper, and I need to give credit where it's due.

 

[Another Ahab]

For the record, the wife would like acknowledged:

"...I have been a very patient wife. I have tollerated the Bus, the Toyota pick-up, the servers, the workstations, long hours away at work, the XM1027 project, giving up on hobbies I liked, you..."

So I think my interest in keeping her happy by getting those ToughBooks tied off and stored shows I am still willing to try to live WITH her. She has been trooper, and I need to give credit where it's due.

 

[rustystud]

Hey Tim, how's it going on getting people to sign up for buying a barrel of "Pri-ocide" ? If you can get enough people to bring the cost down to $50.00 I'm in.

 

[srodocker]

Love this thread!

Current in process of building my own laptop with help of tim! Tim rocks...

 

[rustystud]

I know ! I never would have built my own laptop if it wasn't for Tim and all the help he gave me !

 

[tim292stro]

Thanks all for the kind words. If I can share some of my knowledge to make others happy and get them closer to where they want to be, I'm happy to do so.

The 4kW UPS for this project is going to have to take a little turn. I was originally planning on cramming it into the bottom 2U of the rack case, however the power supplies to take in available A/C power and provide a DC voltage to the charger front-end will take up a bit too much space. I am also thinking I should avoid LiFePO4 batteries as was my original idea in favor or more common AGM/SLA. Currently I'm focusing on 4x of 100Ah AGM wheelchair batteries at about $175 and 71lbs each (PowerStar or PowerSonic - same battery, different color case...). This will mean that to make the case carryable for two people I want to reduce the weight down to ~150lbs per "moved unit", or about 75lbs per person (again using the two person model) - by extension this means it will need two more Hardigg cases to carry nothing but batteries and the battery management circuit/device. Two more Hardigg cases will take more space, but... it's needed.

I've also locked down the connectors I have to use for the lighting system for power/levels/control-data, they aren't cheap, but will do the job perfectly. I wanted to use circular MIL connectors, but they don't have the DC current capacity as well as control-data in the same connector usually, so I've bought some Anderson Power Products SBE80 kits, with (qty 2) PPMX kit, the handles, and the cable clamps (SBE80RED16MMHDL). Had to buy the 25MM (4Ga) terminals separately from the bundle but it was still cost effective that way.

This gives me 4-Gauge +/- power and basically a Cat-5 to go with the connector, plenty for the serial light level data lines, and the RS-485 control lines. I also have the protocol figured out for the control system, it will make it self-learning as to how the system is laid out - which I can control using a simple web-page in the management ToughBook. Things like which strips are part of groups in "rooms," and when a control box is plugged in to the system, which groups those control (on/up/down/off brightness). The protocol will also let me use the same lighting design in the S-250 Shelter project with a second controller and have a redundant control (and tie in the S-250 shelter lights to the camp lights).

It's starting to come into focus.

 

[BobbyT]

Tim, I'm not sure what you are paying for those connectors, but if you could do without the CAT5 connection in the connector itself, you should look at a local forklift supply place, they should have all sizes of Anderson connectors or can get them and they should be pretty cheap. They have them for all different sizes of electric forklifts. I buy almost everything online to save money and when I checked my local Wiess store, I was shocked that they had the connectors I needed for half of the cheapest place I found online.

Needless to say, I start checking locally now too.

I made quick connects for the front and rear of my jeep and truck for jumper cables and rear winch. Been very handy.

 

[rustystud]

Tim, I'm not sure what you are paying for those connectors, but if you could do without the CAT5 connection in the connector itself, you should look at a local forklift supply place, they should have all sizes of Anderson connectors or can get them and they should be pretty cheap. They have them for all different sizes of electric forklifts. I buy almost everything online to save money and when I checked my local Wiess store, I was shocked that they had the connectors I needed for half of the cheapest place I found online.

Needless to say, I start checking locally now too.

I made quick connects for the front and rear of my jeep and truck for jumper cables and rear winch. Been very handy.

I also like to use Anderson connectors. There are a lot of places on the internet that sell them for a good price.

 

[tim292stro]

I would skip pulling in the data lines but I really want to be careful with shielding, make sure it's difficult to damage the data connections, and make sure data gets connected last (power first), so putting it in one connector is critical

Mouser has them at $26 ($21.36 in my expected volume) for the whole set (plus the 8-pin inner contacts), $5.68 ($4.33 in my expected volume) for the replacement 4gauge contacts. Works out to about $26.69 per end - problem is the number of ends, each strip needs 2, each "row" needs another two.

205/305 tent needs 62 ends
203/303 tent needs 38 ends
103 tent needs 26 ends

For a base camp with two 305s, a 103, and a 203 or 303, I need a total of 188 ends before the controller and any extra jumper cables - I'll be ordering a 250 piece volume, or just shy of $6,700 (yeah, just for connectors). Still need wire and the rest of the parts to finish this.

 

[BobbyT]

Wowzers, its going to take you a few years just to make all those connections up. Good luck with that.
It will be sweet though when you get it all completed.

 

[tim292stro]

I used to do commercial telecom about 15 years ago, it doesn't take nearly as long as you think - probably a day for all ~200 of the data connectors, they snap into the power connectors - I'd guess probably another day or two for those. A Couple of weekends maybe, or some nights when I can't sleep? (like counting sheep).

Go-go-gadget-crimper...

 

[turnkey]

This seems to be a sat comm setup....check out the US Army comm site for some new ideas on that front.....Me I just go to radio shack...Sweet looking setup when you are done....

 

[Another Ahab]

This seems to be a sat comm setup....check out the US Army comm site for some new ideas on that front.....Me I just go to radio shack...Sweet looking setup when you are done....

No more Radio Shack:

http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2...-week-of-store-lease-sales-and-auctions.html/
​

 

[tim292stro]

This seems to be a sat comm setup....check out the US Army comm site for some new ideas on that front...

I've actually been following the Win-T initiative for a few years. It takes a while to roll out at "Army scale", you have to figure out how to make it work, get the product vendors (COTS) set up to make what you need, gain the trust of the people whose lives depend on it, get budget behind it, schedule the roll out and work out the bugs in smaller chunks. I get the benefit of mostly copying what they are doing, somewhat closely behind them (still using current tech), but I also don't have the risks involved with the system so much (my life will probably not ever depend on the setup).

The Phase-3 portion of Win-T will make the network easier to use and setup, much like the work that is being done in the private sector for mesh networking (see Broadband-HAMNET and similar projects). Different levels provide different services, satellites talk to each other and the terrestrial-installations or airborne-platforms they can see, terrestrial-installations/airborne-platforms talk to each other and local ground-based resources (larger vehicles). Ground-based resources can talk to each other and foot-soldiers, and foot soldiers can talk to each other. There are so many layers of inter-connectivity and redundancy that the coverage should be darn good compared to the current satellite-relayed comms from individual units - and should allow for better information getting to the right people faster when it counts. Also the management of a battlefield will likely improve astronomically - just think kids these days are playing StarCraft and other strategy games, it could be that some day kids make the transition form playing these games to managing real battles in real-time, like in Ender's Game or Toys. The "God View" of games like StarCraft can be supported with current or improved drones (already networked), and the ground drone battles can be run like so many other first-person shooters (Battlefield, etc...). We're already right about there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JknkBRg9i8

My ends are much more simple - I'm not going to be managing a battle from this setup (closest I might get is supporting a domestic SAR operation eventually), it's probably going to be used mostly for heavy camping, and doing things like rallies and shows. I don't have my own satellite constellation (gosh I could wish though right?), I might end up with a few drones and some Broadband-HAMNET mesh nodes, otherwise I have to rely on commercial terrestrial installations mostly (cell towers), so I can really only hook into what I can do to my gear (other HAMs, the camp-site, my truck, what I carry in a backpack, etc...). I'm thinking flexibility though - to quote Tom Cruise's character in Collateral, "...we're into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, $#!+ happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it..." I already possess that mentality, and many skills to support thinking outside the box - but sometimes being able to roll with it requires some basic hardware, being able to excel at something while adapting requires having actual tools and hardware options available.

 

[tim292stro]

So close to the last two tents it's painfull to wait...

I also filed two classified ads for some missing parts from those two. I'm going to wait on the 103 for now to make more headway on other projects, I'm going to finish the case for the laptops and phones, then start working on the rack again to tie that off this month.