Weekend trip

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Well, there was much to do up at the Beta Site so lets start at the top….

StarLink seemed to work just fine up there. One nice thing was that it allowed text messaging to work up there, which was pretty cool. I ran it off a small lithium battery bank that I picked up at CostCo a while back. Setup was simple, signal was good, and speeds were quite good. All in all, it worked out just fine. I’ve got a Milwaukee Packout case that will have some foam cut to fit the Starlink and all its accessories. The StarLink Mini is quite the piece of gear to let me stay in touch with the rest of the world while being way the heck off the beaten path.

Of course, I wanted to check out the new property markers. I already knew where the old markers were and was curious to see where the newer. more modern, survery put the markers in relation to the old ones. Broadly speaking, there were all within a yard or two of the old ones. At least, 3/4 of them were. I found three of the new ones but when I went to check on the last one, only the old markers were there. No new flagging tape, no new cap, no new nuthin’. Im guessing they didnt finish the task that day and will be back this coming week. But…I went to all the markers and got GPS coords.

And, for better or worse, I had to spend some time posting signage:

It is what it is. I didnt spend all that money to not have privacy. And just to help me stay abreast of any unauthorized visitors while I’m ‘in residence’ I also have these:

IYKYK. I also have a wired set of these and a bunch of extra geophones which will be quite handy for other projects.

While wandering around the property looking for the new markers I wound up tromping through parts I had not been through yet. I mean, I still havent really wandered the entire width and breadth of the property. I kinda held off on doing that because I wasnt 110% sure where my property started and stopped. Well, different story now. While wandering I found a cool little meadow-like area that was literally surrounded by fallen dead trees and in the middle of this opening was a huge tree that was bent into a serpentine shape. It was like some sort of wooden Stonehenge. Had no idea it was there. I need to spend a weekend just meticulously walking a grid so I don’t miss all these details.

Also brought up the other 4×8 deck I built and bolted to the first one I brought up, so now theres and 8×8 platform up there for me to use when I’m up there and need a place off the ground for a tent or cooking.

All in all, a productive trip.

 

Surveyors on site II

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Well, I do have to give them credit…they said theyd be there today and…they were there today.

Apparently two of the corners aren’t an issue but they’re having to work a bit on the remaining two. I’m hoping this is all wrapped up by Friday so I can go up there this weekend and look at my lovely new property borders.

Surveyors on site

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Well, they said the surveyors would be out to day and it looks like they were.

And they even noticed the camera.

As mentioned earlier two of the four corners are marked with some somewhat-official markers – a recent modern marker, and another corner has the original cap from the General Land Office in 1915. THe surveyour-boss emailed me to say that the other two are the ones theyre going to have to ‘calculate’. Since the property lines run N-S and E-W. I cant imagine it would be anymore difficult than a) go to known corner b) travel XXX yards in a straight line on the compass bearing. Where you stop is your corner. But, what do I know……..

And that wasnt the only visitor today. The local fox came by and appears to have brought a lunch with him….

Boundaries

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Heard b ack from the surveyors today. Theyre gonna start tomorrow.  I hope they know what theyre getting themselves into. I’ve managed to find all four ‘corners’ of the property but its a mix of official, semi-official, and I-think-thats-a-marker.

Corner #1: original marker from the  1915 Land Office survey
Corner #2: modern and official marker of recent installation
Corner #3: cairn of rocks with a sawed of t-post painted blue
Corner #4: fallen tree with a thin metal plate with notes scrived into it indicating border of property

Now, of those four only one could reasonably be considered definitive. Thus, the need for something beyond doubt. I have no intentions of doing anything close enough to the borders of my property that I’d be worried about encroaching onto my neighbor’s property. But I need to know so I can make sure the neighbors don’t encroach onto mine.

I’m hoping these guys will be done and have some info for me at the end of the week. Then its a matter of going up there, following the coords they give me, and seeing exactly where the boundaries of my property end and the neighbors begins.

Also, it’ll be nice to have a final bill as well. I’ve set aside a bunch of money in case of a ‘worst case scenario’ in terms of the amount of work they have to do. Hopefully, they can bring it in for less. But, until I know for sure I have to hold off on big spending so I have the money free to pay these guys.

Starlink

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I’m not an Elon Musk fanboy but I don’t dislike him either…. I do respect him for coming up with some cool stuff and then having fun with it. The idea of a notebook-sized satellite dish to get you internet in literally any part of the world is something that was virtually unthinkable a decade or two ago.

For survivalists, one of the great headaches has always been finding a balance between living in the sticks, or even ‘off grid’, but still maintaining some type of communication with other humans…especially your fellow like-minded individuals. Most ‘bugout locations’ are short on things like powerlines and phone lines. The reliable standby has been ham radio, which has its ups and downs…there is no one perfect solution. I remember years ago that there were things like ‘packet radio’ and other radio/internet hybrids. Nowadays you just drop a Starlink on the ground in a clear area and start downloading porn. We’re living in the future.

My needs are quite simple. I’d like to have email and VoIP for voice communication. I’d also like to access Google Earth, get the news, and that sort of thing. Additionally, I’d like to have some internet-connected cameras for real-time viewing. While Starlink appears to be able to do that, the issue of powering the darn thing reliably over time is the new constraint. I need to have a battery system in place that would give me as much time as possible between  charges in case I need a few weeks to get up there. I suppose I could steal an RTG from the arctic somewhere but that seems like a lot of work.

I’ll be exploring solutions but before that I need numbers. So, after unpacking the box from FedEx, I have the Starlink setup in my yard running off a small lithium battery block. This particular power supply is Bluetoothed to my phone so I can track battery life as Starlink is out there doing its thing. Then, once I figure out average usage demands and whatnot I can start scaling a battery system. Yes, of course Im going to integrate some solar panels for charging…but I need some numbers so I can calculate needs and build in extra margins. In a perfect world I’d like to have enough panels up there to charge a battery that is capable of running the thing for a solid month.

And, as I am discovering, the internet is awash with all sorts of third-party items for this little piece of tech. Notably adaptors to let you run on Milwaukee and DeWalt power tool batteries. Thats rather convenient since I’ve got a bunch of them sitting around.

The subscription side of the StarLink equation got squared this week. You can put your subscription into a sleep mode when youre not going to be using it for a length of time and that drops your monthly sub to five or ten bucks. I went with their cheapest monthly plan which is about sixty bucks. I then dumped some money into a new brokerage account, bought a bunch of weekly dividend ETFs, set the brokerage to automatically move the dividends to a new checking account at the end of the month, and then StarLink bills the debit card attached to that account. Basically, a fire and forget arrangement.

My plan was to head up to the Beta Site this weekend and experiment with the StarLink but its raining pretty heavy and I really don’t feel like negotiating heavily rutted muddy roads. And…Im too lazy to go drag the SxS out of storage. So today will be spent on other Beta-Site-related projects. Most notably, I need to put together a secure container kit to put all the StarLink gear in for transit, I need to start calculating power needs, and another one or two projects I’ll post about in a few days.

 

Expensive lunch

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You know you’re in trouble when the gun shop starts calling you. I had told the guy at the gun shop that I was always interested in any HiPowers that came in. And, today, I got the call.

Its an early MkIII (forged frame) in the box, came with six mags, mag pouch, and a Lula mag loader. Although I carry a Glock, and have had some interesting times with them, the HiPower is my favorite 9mm pistol.

Not content to spend money on just one gun, I made the mistake of asking about another gun that I’d had my eye on. A ‘used’ Angstadt 9mm AR pistol. Used is in quotes because even if a gun is 100% unfired and NIB, if it came from someone selling it and not from the factory/distributor it is considered used. I don’t make the rules.

I already have an Angstadt carbine and think it is an outstanding gun. Unlike many 9mm carbines that take Glock mags, this one locks back on empty. Technically a pistol with an arm brace (eyeroll) this little compact guy is handy. Doesnt do anything my Uzi or MP5s dont do, but it does it with compatability with my Glock mags/drums.

It was supposed to be a simple trip to the gun store while on my lunch break to pick up a HiPower and this is what happens…..

Intruder alert

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Well, I figured it would happen sooner or later. Trespassers.

Now, before we get too carried away, there are a handful of possibilities going on here.

Im fairly confident these aren’t the surveyors I hired. Not that late in the day. This could be some people who are lost. They could have mistook this parcel for a different one. It could be one of my ‘neighbors’ who is curious to see if the piece of land that has sat empty and unvisited for the last several years has had some activity (which, yes, is still trespassing.) It could even be a concerned neighbor who saw recent tire tracks there and decided to investigate. So, probably nothing nefarious, but a) I need to keep an eye open for this SxS to determine who it belongs to and b) I need to get the very politely worded no trespassing signs up.

No doubt someone is going to ask about closing off the driveway somehow…chain across it, etc. All the roads up there are easements to allow people to be able to access their properties. This is why when I was looking for properties I made sure to avoid ones that had roads cutting them in half. My piece has a tiny bit of a corner of the property that bumps up against a road. Thats it. My ‘driveway’ is a road (and thats a super generous description) that dead ends in the middle of my property…meaning there is no reason for anyone to be on that road since it goes literally nowhere except to a dead end on my property.

I don’t want to do anything flagrantly unfriendly or un-neighborly. I don’t want the people who do reside up there full time to think the ‘newcomer’ has an attitude and adopt an ‘us vs him’ mentality. But, of course, at the same time, I didn’t drop all that money to not have privacy.

So, next trip up there gets a ‘Please do not trespass” sign on a stake hammered into the middle of my driveway so there’s no mistakes about “I didnt see your sign”.

Three day weekend report

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Well,made it up to the Beta Site.

First thing was to get the platform I built finished up, on its blocks, and leveled. (Why isn’t it spelled ‘levelled’? Seems like it would have the double L…) It worked out pretty fair if I do say so myself:

That thing is 4’x8′ so it should accommodate rather handily one of the individual combat tents I picked up a little while back. Additionally, the prefabrication-in-town, transport-in-the-truck, and assemble-on-site aspect is good practice for when something bigger gets put up. And, gy the way, when that happens, this chunk o’ wood and it’s twin (which is going up there next weekend) will be repurposed as creek-crossing bridges. Speaking of the creek:

Pretty placid, huh? We’ll see what the water flow is like in August.

Also on tap for this trip was a bit of exploring along an edge of the property I havent really spent much time on. It runs along the border of the state land and, wow, it is thick thick thick with blowdown, snags, and deadfall. There is literally a lifetime of firewood laying out there. At some point I’m going to have to clean up some of the more egregious tangles that have pulled down the fence between my place and the state land.

To my surprise, it turns out that if you head off the edge of my property and hop two ridges over on the state land….strong cell signal. Too far from my anticipated habitat to really make a difference, but good to know its there. Speaking of communications, the Starlink setup will, supposedly, be here Friday. This means that, maybe, next weekends posting about the Beta Site might actually be from the Beta Site. We’ll see…gotta iron out a few bugs first.

So…progress being made. Forward movement is being made, just need a lot more of it.