September 5, 2019 was the first day of a four-day site survey in the Clearfork Valley around the Clearfork Community Institute. Greta Byrum and Raul Enriquez from Community Tech NY came to visit us again and brought along Ever Bussey (a researcher from The New School) and Justin Downs (Anthroengineer) to help conduct the study along with April Jarocki and Jamie Greig of Southern Connected Communities.
The idea of the survey is just a first step in looking to get low cost internet to folks of the Clearfork Valley. It will give us an idea on how and if this can be done.
On day 1 we selected where we were going to attach the radio’s at CCI and selected test sites for the next three days. Day 2 we went to Log Mountain Road and Highway 90 near the county line. Day 3 took us to Adkins Hill and Teague Mountain and near the Eagan Post Office. Day 4 found us on a hill behind Ronnie Adkins House on Teague Mountain. We found that some of the radios and antennas worked great going through the trees and others not at all.
It is our dream to find a way to get low-cost internet to the entire Clearfork Valley, but it takes time. We have already got CCI connected, and now looking for a way to connect the surrounding area. If you are interested in learning more about this project, feel free to come to CCI for Cyber Café on Tuesdays and Thursdays 9am to 9pm and talk to April.