LowLANder - LLT x Ghost Town Living

webshark25 · October 4, 2021

I'm not sure if anyone else is familiar with the Ghost Town Living YT channel.

He did a video a while ago playing Minecraft in an Abandoned Mineshaft (although it's unlisted currently for some reason). Anyway he owns a ghost town in California named Cerro Gordo with an operating hoist. They have problems with radios communicating with the hoist operator when inside the cage. I wonder if it would be possible for LTT to do a collab with them and try to install a long distance WiFi solution in the manway or something to help them out?

It would be really awesome to see a v2 of HighLANder (for those who've been following LTT for a long time) but this time hundreds of feet underground this time .

What are your thoughts?

dizmo · October 4, 2021

I see this being filled with issues, including employee safety.

I think I've seen this YT channel, and while cool, I don't believe the guy that bought it is an engineer.

It's also pretty likely that they don't have the same audience so the colab isn't really worthwhile.

Arika · October 4, 2021

Any YT channel:

has a slight technological problem

people:

LTT SHOULD DO A COLAB AND HELP THEM!!!!!!

akio123008 · October 4, 2021

2 hours ago, webshark25 said:

He did a video a while ago playing Minecraft in an Abandoned Mineshaft

I think a mine shaft is kind of cheating. Kind of like flying in some aircraft for the highest LAN party.

For me it'd have to be some natural location, so a cave for instance would count.

LogicalDrm · October 4, 2021

Says level 200 at some point of that video. If US level depths go in same way as Finnish ones, thats 200ft under sea level, or the 0 level which might not be sea level. So about 60m deep. If they take HighLANder route, its actually super-easy. Powerbank, wireless access point and some laptops. There are even bit deeper museum spaces they could use to make it easier. Or visit even deeper, active mines.

WiFi isn't that hard either. It just requires some powerful repeaters to expand network. Much more feasible way of doing thing would be fibre optic connection. If you want internet. But regular radiophones or even landline would do same thing. So how things are done in modern mine anyway.

If they are having trouble with radios, there must be some strong magnetic ore still in that mine. So why would WiFi work any better? It uses same radio frequencies as radiophones would. My vote goes for fibre line.

IkeaGnome · October 4, 2021

13 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Says level 200 at some point of that video. If US level depths go in same way as Finnish ones, thats 200ft under sea level, or the 0 level which might not be sea level.

Typically here, the level is elevation yeah. I work on the 850 level here, so 850 feet above sea level. Our mine goes up to around 2200 feet, and down to the -250.

13 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Much more feasible way of doing thing would be fibre optic connection. If you want internet. But regular radiophones or even landline would do same thing.

Fiber is how we're set up here as well. Then we have various APs scattered across the mine. I don't know actuals on what or where, I'm not in IT.

As for the radio, I haven't watched the video so I'm not sure how they have it set up. If they're using Walkie Talkies, they're not doing it correctly. Our mine is fairly low concentration (We're happy for 0.25 ounces to the ton, highest I've seen is 0.49 oz/ton for gold) and they just won't work well. Even when people try to bring drones and stuff out here there's just too much interference. Granted we've got 4160V and 16kV underground. What we have, and most big mines here use are VHF or UHF radios. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/two-way-radios/analog-business-radios/discontinued/pr400.html#tabproductinfo

We have to have a FCC license to run them, and adhere to FCC rules on them. We've got antennas on surface, and then underground we use "leaky feeder". It's basically just a wire that is used as an antenna that runs through all the headings and levels to get reception everywhere.

Edit:

Allows for cool things like this. That loader is being operated by someone on surface. About 13km away

LogicalDrm · October 4, 2021

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

Typically here, the level is elevation yeah. I work on the 850 level here, so 850 feet above sea level. Our mine goes up to around 2200 feet, and down to the -250.

Fiber is how we're set up here as well. Then we have various APs scattered across the mine. I don't know actuals on what or where, I'm not in IT.

As for the radio, I haven't watched the video so I'm not sure how they have it set up. If they're using Walkie Talkies, they're not doing it correctly. Our mine is fairly low concentration (We're happy for 0.25 ounces to the ton, highest I've seen is 0.49 oz/ton for gold) and they just won't work well. Even when people try to bring drones and stuff out here there's just too much interference. Granted we've got 4160V and 16kV underground. What we have, and most big mines here use are VHF or UHF radios. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/two-way-radios/analog-business-radios/discontinued/pr400.html#tabproductinfo

We have to have a FCC license to run them, and adhere to FCC rules on them. We've got antennas on surface, and then underground we use "leaky feeder". It's basically just a wire that is used as an antenna that runs through all the headings and levels to get reception everywhere.

Thanks for backing my take based on very few times inside working mine (Lohja limestone mine, -350m at deepest). What I do remember from that, back in 2013, was that we had radiophones to contact control room, machine operators and us two geologists driving around.

IkeaGnome · October 4, 2021

12 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

Thanks for backing my take based on very few times inside working mine (Lohja limestone mine, -350m at deepest). What I do remember from that, back in 2013, was that we had radiophones to contact control room, machine operators and us two geologists driving around.

No problem. Once the infrastructure is set up, it's a really cool system. I'm a 4.25 mile drive from surface right now and some 2000 feet below the top of the mountain typing this.

@webshark25That idea is probably too expensive and complicated for LTT. Once you start talking about internet and all that underground, you have to think power. It's hard to get power underground. Since there's no ventilation in the mine on that video there's no room for running a diesel generator underground. Now you're looking at running power wires through the mine to get where they need to be. Big losses on low voltage. Now you need high voltage and step down transformers (MPCs is what we call them). You could run ventilation, but then you're looking for a vent fan like this https://www.industrialfansdirect.com/products/airflo-tube-axial-duct-fan-36-inch-17620-cfm-3-phase-direct-drive-ndl36-g-3-t-national-fan-co , the vent bag to actually take fresh air to where you're working (the yellow tube in the spoiler below) at $260 per 50 foot section. Vent bag is also a consumable. It gets torn, ripped and broken easily.

Some mines, like the one I work at can get around a lot of this by using 2 portals. We have natural airflow that goes through the mine, then at each level we use vent bag and fans to take fresh air to the faces.

Once you get around the air and electricity problem, you've got water. Even though that video looks dry, it's very humid. You need APs and hardware that are water proof or everything will get soaked inside out. Especially with heat cycles. Once a month, I change the desiccant packets in my computer. They're still soaked by the time I do it, but that's how often I'm told to.

Then you also have to think about ground support. The second picture I posted, that chicken wire and the square metal plates are holding the mine up. They've got none. And their rock has some horrible lines in it. (picture 3) Those cracks and voids are slips. There's nothing but gravity and a little bit of friction holding those rocks there...above their ladder....above their head when they're climbing up. It looks like you could peel back about 3 feet of the rib(wall) there by hand. And that's all over in their mine. Run a jackleg in there for a week or two, clean it up and bolt it up, or run timbers in there and do some timber sets and call it good. Timber sets would make the drift awfully tight, so you'd probably want to breast down a bit to make room and square up the tunnels.

TLDR: I wouldn't trust that mine, let alone have Linus go in there for extended amounts of time with a camera crew and bulky equipment. There's a reason he brought a ton of recovery and safety gear, then just a laptop and a GoPro.

Spoiler