My Northern office has a good view

"ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com" (ita97) 06/29/2020 at 22:39 • Filed to: None

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Another M onday brings a road trip to one of our repeaters for the flood warning system up on top of a mountain in the next county over. This is on top of a 7500ft mountain from the surrounding desert floor that’s about 4200ft in elevation. It was a glorious 15 degrees cooler up there than on the desert floor.

These first two pictures look West over the Northern reaches of Caballo Lake and the Black Range of the Gila National Forest off in the distance. Looking East in the next two pictures g azes out over the Jordana del Mureto section o f the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro with the San Andres Mountains off in the distance. Today this area is still remote ranch land, test ranges for White Sands Missile Range and home of the still fledgling Spaceport America.

Multiple agencies have access to this radio room, so I wasn’t too surprised the 1/2" ratcheting wrench I mistakenly left up there in March wasn’t around anymore. I did pickup a couple of spare GPS cables I had also left up there. Our repeater for the flood warning system also got a grounding upgrade to a nearby ground bus bar while I was there. The real purpose of this trip was check on things in a fairly remote radio room the more elderly radio shop guys from IT don’t get around to often, and to show a coworker around the antenna farm up there. I’m firmly in the camp of no institutional knowledge should ever reside with only one person, so it had been on my list for awhile to make sure someone else from the commission knew how to get up there and the layout of our equipment up top.

This field trip meant I got paid for driving around in the desert for most of the day. It’s four hours of drive time round tip, with two hours up and down the mountain in 4wd-low with the rear diff locked and very, very carefully picking lines over rocks in a stock height truck, which is also another way of saying this is a gloriously scenic place the Subaru set can’t get to . I’m thankful a job wherein I spend less than 50% of my time in the offi ce. I like playing in the dirt.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 22:47

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Awesome scenery and great work. Thank you for sharing. Im a little jealous, but I also get to go to some cool places for work.

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 22:48

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I have fond memories of similarly remote work shenanigans with attractive outlooks...take full advantage as is your due.

jminer > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 22:49

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That’s stunning!

Bylan - Hoarder of LS400's > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 22:50

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Sounds like an interesting days work, if you'd call it that. Nice views

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Snuze: Needs another Swede 06/29/2020 at 23:09

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Those look like some fantastic places.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 23:18

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They are quite nice. Top is in the Bahamas. Bottom is in Alaska.

But I have to say, the view from your remote site is simply amazing.  

DipodomysDeserti > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 23:32

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Are you hiring?

ClassicDatsunDebate > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 23:32

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Really cool!

wafflesnfalafel > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/29/2020 at 23:37

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gorgeous -

(and impressive climb for base/corporate model f150 - 3.5 v-6?)

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > DipodomysDeserti 06/30/2020 at 00:08

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We are for a new grants administrator position , but that’s fundamentally an office critter paperwork job. Not to say that person won’t ever get to go outside, but it won’t be a regular thing for them.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/30/2020 at 00:49

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Many institutions are struggling with the loss of institutional knowledge as their workforce retires or passes away. We’ve tried to help a number of agencies preserve that information. M ost of them recognize the problem, yet refuse to do anything about it.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > TheRealBicycleBuck 06/30/2020 at 01:11

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In this case it is new knowledge and I’m the young guy that happens to know it, but nonetheless my basic approach is to account for getting hit by the proverbial bus. Several times in the archives for the university I was involved in situations where there was either a big loss of institutional knowledge , or real risk of it happening, because lots of important stuff left when a person  did. Its an easily preventable situation if one makes an effort to address it on the front end.

Those experiences have marked me as one who actively tries to prevent that from happening. I came into a situation here at the flood commission where too much of the institutional knowledge for the warning system resided only with the person I was specifically hired to replace when he retires later this year. To make it more fun he’s not big on documentation or communication.   It has been an effort to both get the information from him, and try to make sure I’m also documenting and disseminating it to more than just me.

TorqueToYield > TheRealBicycleBuck 06/30/2020 at 06:30

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And then there are the old engineers I work with who intentionally prevent other people from knowing what they know for ‘job security’ and ego reasons.

Thomas Donohue > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/30/2020 at 08:18

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Very cool.  From Google maps it looks like there’s plenty of power up there, but surprised there isn’t more solar for backup....unless there’s been recent installations.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com 06/30/2020 at 08:37

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Most of our situations involve big infrastructure - levee systems, sewer systems, water systems, storm sewers, gas, cable, telephone, BRIDGES(!), etc. While we’ve had some success, the information lost is appalling. We’ve had a lot more luck coordinating between entities when we are doing big projects and providing them with full documentation afterward. That has led to a few contracts where we further document their systems, but our most successful endeavors are when we include documentation as part of the requirements for broad-scale projects. For example, we have done a number of watershed-level projects where we have to model the entire drainage area, including the storm sewers. It’s on those big projects that we can convince the counties involved to survey their systems or let us do it. Without it, the modeling is guaranteed to be absolutely wrong.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > wafflesnfalafel 06/30/2020 at 09:01

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5.0 V8. This truck has to tow, too, although it’s really the wrong motor. These trucks are so much better with either of the ecoboost engines. I had the 2.7 in my personal 2017. In general, this truck spends hours per week in 4- low.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Thomas Donohue 06/30/2020 at 09:20

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I’ve never really seen solar at any antenna farms around here.  There’s lots of propane up there to power backup generators.  I’d love to see the propane truck they drive up here, although I know the propane service is very, very expensive.  I’m guessing they must use something like a smaller tank mounted on an old duce and a half, or the like.  A regular medium duty strait truck that usually see for propane trucks ain’t making up this road.