September 24th, 1997
                        Down at the Crick
                               or
           Field Science Education by Wireless in Montana

        Lewistown is at the geographical center of the State of
Montana. Which is another way of saying, not near much of anything.
For the town of only 8,000 is in the middle of Big Sky open country
over 100 driving miles in any direction from larger cities like
Billings, Great Falls, or Helena. But in the midst of glorious
mountains, streams, wildlife, plains, and bright blue-sky vistas.

       It is, of course, primarily an agricultural town, with
cattle, wheat and other livestock and grains produced in abundance.
With fishing its pristine waters and hunting its game by visitors an
important second source of revenue

        And feeding into Lewistown, as the center of the Central
Montana, from distances of 15 to 57 miles away are a whole series of
smaller towns - Denton, Grass Range, Harlowton, Hobson, Judith Gap,
Moore, Stanford, Winifred and Winnitt - with populations of only 133
to 1049. Each with schools, such that there are 9 seperate school
districts within 50 miles of Lewistown.

        But there's the rub. In this Age of Information, the
necessity of schools to have access to the Internet, but with
ferocious telephone calling charges, with services crossing LATA
boundaries making so many calls long distance, reliance on US West
and smaller telephone companies for global network access is out of
the question. And with costs of $1,700 a month for 1 T-1 line to
come to Lewistown, until now it has been almost impossible for
anyone to make it as an Internet Service Provider.

                        New Beginnings

        But one small hardy band of pioneers is trying, anew. And when I
learned of their circumstances, educational needs, but determination to
get connected somehow, I flew to Billings on the NSF's nickle, and drove
130 miles further, at 80 miles an hour to the center of Montana (the state
has no hard and fast speed limit)  dodging antelope on the roads around
dusk to share with them - as part of the 'disemmination of findings' task
the NSF projects require, the good news of no licence Wireless, and point
them in directions they could try, to cut their costs while delivering
good bandwidth. Not only to the outlying communities and schools,
desperate for some way to get connected, but also across Lewistown itself,
which, except for modem dialup, has few data line services, and those
prohibitively costly. 

        So my 3 days visit was for three practical purposes: (1)  lecture
representatives of the whole regional community, and especially educators,
about the new wireless data possibilities and advise them how to take
advantage of its benefits as an alternative to the much-hated (around
there and most of Montana I take it) US West, (2) advise the emerging
Lewistown On-Line company, and the members of the Trail Head coalition -
those community level volunteers at the center trying to get internet
services started - on the very technical aspects of these forms of
wireless pushed to their range limits required in such country, and (3) 
see if there was a small, original, useful wireless NSF educational
wireless field test project I could justify funding and supporting.

        To my pleasure and relief, I was able, with the vigerous
help of those who invited me, to accomplish all three goals of my
visit to a remote place, and wasted nobody's time, including my own,
or the NSF's dollars. For Lewistown and the surrounding communites
are as ready and willing to try and get connected as any place I
have visited over the past two years. And willing to do their part,
with whatever it takes. And to the extent that remote Montana region
does get connected, affordably, it is a model for lots of other
rural areas.

        Another, unintended consequence of the visit was that civic
leaders began to realize that the ONLY reason they cannot take advantage
more readily and affordably of no-licence advanced radio technology, is
that the FCC severely limits the power of Part 15 spread spectrum radios,
(to 1 watt at the radio, and 4 watts EIRP at the antenna) and therefore
the effective range they can operate over, applying rules made almost
entirely for 'urban' areas and its utterly different, from rural,
interference potential. They offered to communicate with their influential
representative Senator Conrad Burns to see if he could get the FCC to see
the rural radio light, for it affects a large portion of the hundreds of
small towns of Montana - which is largely made up of small towns, and very
small schools. A common rural America problem that those inside the
beltway seem to have trouble grasping. Yes, I told them, with 5 watts of
permitted power, instead of the 1 watt now authorized, they not only could
deliver good bandwidth data services to the 10 small towns within 50 miles
of them, but the Lewistown ISP could probably get T-1 data service from
Helena the same way, 100 miles, at affordable costs, but ALSO - the sing
song of Washington which claims, right up to FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt
and the Congress, it wants 'competition' with phone companies, deliver
that too, in a region of the country where there is none, and not likely
to be ANY for the forseeable future. And for which the well intended, but
for the region I am describing, ridiculously costly Universal Service
Fund, using telephone lines is silly if there is a no-cost wireless
alternative. 

       Now I will report later on some other aspects of these new
Electronic beginnings in Central Montana, but right now let me
elaborate on the one educational project that I found that goes far
beyond what any telephone company could offer.

                   Field Science by Wireless

       I learned several important things about the schools of
Lewistown itself while there. First of all, that, in spite of their
small size - only 1,600 students total across all 5 schools of the
District, they are very good schools, with 94% graduation rates.

       Even more significant, they are noted for their strength,
from elementary through high school, for their math and science
curricula and accomplishments. In fact, a student team from their
Fergus High School came in 5th in the Nation in the Department of
Energy sponsored national Science Bowl Competition in 1996, and were
the ONLY general 'public' school among the 18 finalists. All other
finalists being private or magnet schools. A credit to the entire
district and the importance they put on effective education. They
feed many graduates into CalTech each year, and work at spawning
future American scientists. And the preparation starts in the
elementary schools.

       So it was against this backdrop that I learned of a very
special environmental science project which has been spearheaded by
Junior High Science Teacher Steve Paulson and his students for the
past 4 years, which is also of great importance to the town itself.

       For four years the 125+ junior high students have collected a
wide range of water quality data from Big Spring Creek that runs
through Lewistown into the Judith, then Missouri River in what is
called the 'Brewery Flats Project' after the marshy area between
whose banks the creek once meandered.

       This is a very special creek, for it springs from a huge
underground acquifer bubbling up from a fresh water spring in the
foothills of the Big Snowy Mountains 7 miles south of town. Its pristine
original flow, according to EPA standards is the finest quality water in
the United States.

       But when the railroads came to town, the stream, where it
meandered through the approaches to the town, was channelized at the
Brewery Flats, private land, and decades of railroad and industrial
wastes sunk into the nearby ground, threatening the trout stream.
The railroads in that vicinity stopped operating in the 1950's, and
the tracks were pulled up in the 70's. The pollution and channelized
stream remains.

       So both as a community project, school project, and state
environmental project that has waxed and waned, school kids have
periodically marched to the flats waded in, and taken a wide range of
measurments during the school year - Ph, dissolved oxygen (DO), fecal
coliform (FC), biological oxygen demand (BOD), Temperature, Phosphates,
Nitrates, Turbidity, Total Solids, velocity of flow, and then life forms
(macroinvertebrates) and vegetations. And analyzed the water quality
results. And in a somewhat limited fashion, due to not being connected to
the Internet, shared this data with the High School Biology teachers, and
sent it on to a Missouri River Water Quality project. 

       In the summer when school is out, such measurements are limited,
and in the winters, where temperature can get into the -40 degree range,
the ability to collect the data by students is curtailed. 

       So the Junior High Science teacher - an amateur scientist
himself - was delighted to hear that it was possible to use wireless
devices to communicate from and command sensory equipment (probes)
on the 'Crick' to gather data year round, sending it right into the
school room's computers, where the students could analyze and
record the data, as well as communicate it via email, and web page,
to others, including professionals monitoring changes in water
quality on important water sheds in the US, as well as Montana.

                    The Radios Work in Montana Too!

        With John Payne, Rick Waltenbaugh and Terry Casey of Lewistown
On-Line (LOL), and Forrest Christian from the Helena based Montana
Internet Corporation (and iMach Ltd, his own firm), an upstream Internet
provider to Montana, we did some preliminary radio site survey work. We
placed one FreeWave DRG115 radio with small 2dB gain antenna (rubber
duck) in various places near the center of town - the High School, the
Carnigie Public Library, and finally right in the science classroom at
the Junior High, where excited kids watched with wonder as the blinking
lights reported our progress. (and applauded when the links were made,
and the little green lights glowed) We drove around in my rental car,
with a second radio, yagi antenna with 12 feet of RF cable attached, and
a Radio Shack car cigarette lighter adapter to deliver 12 volts DC to
the radio.

        To everyone amazement (and joy), we got a solid signal from
everywhere, even to a point about 6 miles out of town. (I did not have
extra antennas to rig the base antenna with a more powerful or directional
one).  And we got, right down at the grass and water level, connectivity
to the classroom between two 115Kps, serial port, 12 volt DC, spread
spectrum radios operating in the 902-928Mhz no licence FCC Part 15
spectra. 

        In other words, with rechargable battery power at the field site,
and water data sensors, it would be possible to set up a sophisticated
monitoring station, with the terminus in Mr. Paulson's Science Classroom
gathering important water quality data at zero communications cost as
periodically as desired and indefinitely - even while the town attempts to
redirect the stream into its original meandering flow pattern, while
skirting polluted areas.

        Serious Educational Field Science by Wireless. 

                        A Plan Emerges

        With everyone exited, from the Principal of the High School, Scott
Dubbs, who helped get everyone there, at an early breakfast meeting the
last day, a plan emerged that looks wholly feasible, and can probably be
done for less than $5,000. 

        1. NSF Project provide two suitable radios and necessary
peripherals and technical data radio link support. As well as
monitor and report on the project as a use of Wireless for Field
Science.
        2. John Payne of LOL, who has a strong engineering
background, help the high school engineering course fabricate a
weatherproof case for the radio, batteries, and sensory equipment.
Design a solar power recharger to use with the batteries, which will
both power the equipment, and provide heater filament heat when the
temperature drops below the equipment and battery safe levels.
        3. Steve Paulson, Science Teacher, and Frank Hallett, High
School Chemistry teacher who is knowledgable in scientific
instrumentations, working with Forrest Christian of Helena, who has
skill and experience in interfacing electronic equipment, to come up
with appropriate sensors, telecom, and software interfaces.
        4. LOL to provide, with some ADP cost-support from the NSF
project, web site data base displays, for anyone-access to the data.
        5. Biology Teachers and classes at the High School to share
the data, help analyse and distribute it.
        6. Students at the Junior High to collect and analyse the
data both by field visits and via the wireless link, and prepare it
for further transmission to interested parties.
        7. Forrest Christian to set up the Internet maillist for the
principals of the project, to facilitate its planning and
implementation.
        8. Terry Casey keep the community - newpaper, radio, Trail Head
members - informed of the progress of this project. So the town can
monitor and support its implementation, and perhaps speed up the process
of successfully restoring Big Spring Creek to its original course and
glory without destroying it. Which will take close monitoring.

                              Action

        While there are many things which have to be accomplished, and
with no one knowing whether this grand Field Science by Wireless project
will work exactly as planned and within budget - there are many, many
technical issues to overcome, and specialized equipment to be fabricated
to operate under severe conditions - action has started.  The only thing
we DO know, is that the radios can link the field site and the classroom
without clean line of sight, through walls, windows, and vegetation and
between Internet and web linked computers and the drangonfly nymphs and
dissolved nitrates of Big Spring Creek on Brewery Flats in the remote
regions of Montana. And that lots of competant professionals and eager
kids, equipped with advanced radio technologies brought down to small and
affordable packages are ready to try and make it work. For their own
education, and for trout fishermen of Montana's future. 

        Stay tuned.

        Me, I'll probably be down at the crick, seeing if a fly rod can
make a good antenna. :-)

        Dave Hughes
        Principal Investigator
        NSF Wireless Field Test Project
        dave@oldcolo.com
        http://wireless.oldcolo.com