I’m one of those guys with a truck and all sorts of interesting parts and pieces available.
Depending on how things go, I might end up hauling a flat bed trailer to CFT, in which case I could bring quite a bit of useful gear.
One thing that was brought up last year was showers - Crazy Joe has one set, but a second set would be nice.
I’m sure I could rig up another set like he does, probably put it up by blue camp or something.
Another idea would be a major charging station - I have quite a few large UPS-type batteries; I could easily rig up a board of cigarette lighter plugs for people to charge their phones and such with car chargers.
Also adding a small inverter and a power strip or two wouldn’t be hard.
Chances are I might well bring a few solar panels(100w type) and setup a decent solar array for keeping everything charged.
Any other ideas of things that might be useful for the camp? I was impressed with what Crazy Joe is doing, and have the ability to do similarly, so…
@WoofyTheBunny and I finished setting up a business-band radio repeater for BLFC. The license allows for its use outside the area we normally operate, so it can be used at CFT. The repeater is currently configured to be powered by 110AC, but internally it’s all 12V, so we just bypass that power supply and put it straight on the batteries.
I’m willing to offer its use to CFT as a higher-power radio with more reach and punch than the XRS radios they use (the XRS are more useful radios in close quarters, but they’re pretty range-limited). Assuming CFT is interested in my offer, some power would be helpful for running the repeater and keeping the radios charged.
I’m interested in using radios that have better range for some roles, particularly reaching greeters and/or the waterfall, but I foresee a couple things that might make commercial radios a bad fit for general in-camp staff use, where the range of the eXRS really haven’t been a problem.
The biggest one is batteries: At a con like BLFC, turning your radio in to a charging stand at the end of a shift is no big deal. Even for people who might need to be roused in the event of an incident, falling back to contacting them by phone works well enough. That doesn’t apply for CFT: even the subset of staff who go actually off-radio still keep their radios on hand, because the speed difference for getting back online might really matter (press on button, versus get dressed and stumble to wherever) if something is happening. We can’t rely on being able to call each other—very few of us even keep our phones powered at all.
The second issue stems from the first: We don’t have a place that’s appropriate to leave a bunch of valuable stuff that staff can drop in and out of at a whim. Even if the radios had removable/rechargeable packs separate from the radios, manning the security of them would require resources we don’t have. (We also don’t have 24-hour power, although I’m all ears if that can be changed or arranged.)
For a system to be viable, we’d need to be able to somehow keep a charged radio or pack available for all staff at all times, for swapping out the radio or battery as they die.
I’m also concerned re how easily we could be crippled by someone using one stolen radio to act as a jammer, whereas with eXRS we can very easily switch to a different code that puts us on an entirely different FHSS pattern. (Mal intent not even being necessary for a radio to become a jammer we can’t do anything about, re the outhouse incident.)
We are quite good on the number of eXRS radios—it’s actually quite possible that I have the largest collection of them aside from whatever the manufacturer held onto.
Talk to crazyjoe about a water wheel powerd generator. (Let’s use the stream next to the convention) We should be able to use a basic generator turbine.
I’m going to be stopping by the USDA’s natural resource conservation service. And I will check on environmentally of what we can and cannot do. The office is 7 miles from where I live
