Setting Up an OpenBTS Site on the Playa

We read all of the Burning Man required and suggested reading. We draw up a plan for a PVC-framed Quonset-hut-type structure, similar to this one that would be about 12' wide and 30' long. This plan called for 22 pieces of 3' rebar, 28 10' sections of 1" schedule 40 pipe, a pile of miscellaneous couplers, 22 6" toggle-ball bungee loops and a 19'x29.5' tarp. We would orient it perpendicularly to the runway at the BRC airport, since we're sure they've already scouted out the prevailing winds, and stick a 10'x10' tent in one end of it. We rounded up 45,000 kcal of food that would keep in 100F heat and containers for 35 gallons of water. We planned to leave Fairfield Monday morning and be fully operational not long after dark. The first departure from this plan was that we arrived during a dust storm Monday afternoon. Traffic was backed up for 20 miles. We waited over four hours for the storm to clear and the gates to open, entered the playa around 10 PM and pitched camp in the dark, still in partial white-out conditions.

(That's a line of parked cars and RVs on the horizon.)

Around midnight, the winds died down to nearly nothing and stayed that way for the next two days. Being reliant on a wind turbine for power, this was a serious problem. For a little while, we ran the car to try to put a charge on the BTS battery.

On Tuesday afternoon, Harvind drove back to Reno (7 hour round trip) for a portable generator and gasoline. But by late Tuesday night we could actually start the system and do some range testing. The bad news though was that while waiting for the generator we had damaged our main battery by drawing the charge down too low, so we had to run the generator full time and were consuming the gasoline much more rapidly than expected. So on Thursday afternoon, David drove back to Bruno's Shell in Gerlach for more gasoline and, by luck, found what was probably the only serviceable car battery offered for sale in a 100-mile radius. (David had actually called Bruno's from the SIP phone the day before and they said they didn't have any car batteries. That goes to show that even after a Herculean technical effort, a phone is no more useful than the person who answers it.)