Engineering students test radio repeater at 2 p.m. for Honduras mission

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The engineering students tested the radio repeater, which they have built for the Honduras mission.

 

Next week, a group of Lipscomb University's engineers are spending Spring Break setting up a radio repeater they have built to go on top of a mountain in Honduras. The repeater will allow medical clinics in the mountainous regions of Catacamas to communicate with the main PrediSan health clinic in the area. Communication usually requires walking or driving through incredibly difficult terrain, sometimes taking days to cover the equivalent to 40 miles of land. For the smaller, remote clinics, this sometimes means losing a patient's life if necessary supplies are not attainable in time.

 

The Lipscomb students decided to focus on this problem for their Spring Break mission, hoping that by using their engineering skills to build the radio repeater, lives can be saved with efficient communication. The group, along with adult supervisors, spent months preparing for next week's trip. They had to figure out exactly how tall the repeater needs to be, which mountain top will serve as its best home and whether the farthest reaching clinic will indeed be able to communicate with the addition of the tower. 

Running on solar energy, the group also had to figure out how large a battery is needed to maintain solar power 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even during monsoon season. 

All of the students' hard work came to a decisive moment as they assembled the tower and performed distance testing. They then disassembled it and will get it ready for the next week's trip to Honduras.