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So I met the owner of the DT175, and here he is:
Meet Davy, a Glaswegian who has spent most of his adult life in Oz. We chatted over a beer and then dinner.
I will relay a little of his history as it is both inspiring and instructive for those of us who think of ourselves as ‘adventure motorcyclists’.
Davy left the UK age 21 riding a rather scrappier, black version of this Honda CD175
He rode it across Europe and then on through Iran and Asia to Australia, surviving crashes with U turning motorists and the like.
Later in the 90s he rode his MZ250 from UK to the Middle East and Syria to Egypt where he had to abandon it due to military conflict.
He has ridden the DT 175 from Glasgow through Egypt and Eastern Africa down to here over 8 months and is headed for Capetown.
He built that DT panniers from large Diesel containers; removed the auto lube for simplicity and so he could vary the mix as a way of coping with the altitude of places like Ethiopia; and enjoys the simplicity of the kick start and magneto which removes the need for a battery to start. He cruises at 80-90 kmh as (in his words) he likes to crash slowly .
I was struck by the simplicity of his approach by contrast to the high speed convoy of S African GSAs that passed me earlier in the day.
And most impressive is that he has suffered from debilitating arthritis since his youth and so finds the 100kg weight and slender fuel tank of the DT a good way to cope with his physical limitations. Respect!
It looks like there are several Mobile phone anntenna at the top of the mast.
The 5 small dishes on the top half of the mast are probably the short range microwave communication dishes that distribute the mobile network to other masts.
There are several UHF and VHF dipoles on the top half of the mast, these are probably for government (and maybe some private) services such as Police, Medical, etc., they could also be carrying simple telemetry signals.
The three large dishes on the Concrete/brick section of the mast are long range microwave dishes. These could be carrying the main trunk route for the mobile telephone services but, depending on the technology being used, the data bandwidth on these routes could be quite large so it is very likely they are also carrying other services such as the trunk route for landline telephone service, telemetry for control systems (for just about any industry, e.g mining, oil, steel works, etc.), video, and even TV channels, etc.
Not knowing the terrain of the area it's hard to say why there are two antenna on one side, but only one on the other, it could be that there are two independent radio links in that direction. However, if the microwave signals are passing over water, especially tidal water, this can have serious attenuation affects on the radio signal as the water level rises and falls, so to get round this they use space diversity techniques. This is simply sending the same signal to two antennas, a short distance vertically apart, on the same route (sometimes there are two antenna at both ends of the link, sometimes only two at one end of the link), the signal is then monitored for fading on both antenna and the one with the stronger signal is selected as the 'online' antenna. Because there is a small distance separating the two antenna there are effectively two paths for the signal, if they've done their calculations right only one path will suffer from excessive fading at any one time, so there'll always be at least one good path.
I believe a similar fading effect can be caused when the signal passes over desert (due to heat haze changes), so if there is no open water nearby this may explain why there are two antenna facing the same direction. It may also explain why there is only one antenna on the RHS of the mast, space diversity may be achieved on this link by using two antenna at the far end.
Now I've bored you all with my over-simplistic explanation I'll clear off
The compendious knowledge of the Tossariat continues to amaze...but perhaps a separate thread?
simondippenhall said:Any kind reader tell em what these are for? (They appear periodically here and I assume are for telecoms?)
The large dishes and concrete tower date from the seventies. Because of the long distances involved, mictowave dishes were used instead of copper telephone lines between Namibia and South Africa. The steel structure on top would have been added much later after the invention of mobile phones.I know, I know
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Great ride report. Really enjoyed the Namibia section which brought back memories of my parents travels out there in early 1990's when UN had a bunch of Irish Police (gardai) out there in all areas including remote bushland to facilitate the transition to democracy.
Thanks B Murr: that made me laugh, I had an image of these huge gardai siochana swearing in their Serge uniforms under the Namibian sun��