It is. I am always amazed at how beautiful of these are. But, they are intended as decision making tool, or in this case - a bad decision. It's a mine, a big mine, with lots of talented and capable people, and they do all of their own engineering including their radios used to communicate across the project. They have to. They are in central Wyoming, 65 miles or more in any direction to population, and at least a day's travel from any support organizations. So, they do it all. They get the broad strokes right, but the wizard's work, the finesse, is sometimes missing.
They are all about brute force. If you want to acheive something, just add lots of energy. But, they added too much. They had coverage issues. They added more transmitters. That didn't fix things. They added more. Still not fixed. After a couple whacks at the pinata they called in a contractor to review their work. This is what I've come up with so far.
I've overlaid the basic coverage on to Google Earth. Green is guaranteed success, red is guaranteed failure, and yellow is the coin toss area where the probability of success varies based on a number of factors that are constantly changing. Weather, man-made electrical noise, batteries, and equipment maintenance are the most common contributing factors. The plot shows the entire mine has excellent coverage. The predicted model says there is sufficient energy for success everywhere. Barring missing information making my assumptions wrong, they shouldn't have any problems.
The second overlay shows the contributions of the five sites displayed as distinct colors. Now the problem becomes evident - the sites are too close together and it is confusing their radios. The radios in the field cannot get a good signal because there is too much signal. It's the same problem people have in a room full of other people talking loudly. You can hear someone close to you, but not someone across the room.
The mine in the north with the light blue plot has very few problems. Terrain masking is keeping the other sites out giving it an area to itself. As you move south beyond the ridge, you run into four transmitters beating up on each other. The violet is intended for the admin building. It needs to be turned way down to just cover the building itself. The dark green is their main transmitter, but it is getting hemmed in by the new transmitter that didn't solve anything (in Crayola flesh tone) and the south area transmitter (in fuscia) where they lay down the spoils. They need to turn the new one off, and turn the south one down so the main one has a chance.
They claim that will negatviely effect the coverage in the NW which I agree is possible. So, we are in the process of finding a suitable location over there. It's their land. They can put anything anywhere without an outside approval process. It's just a matter of planning and execution.
So, engineering software becomes art.
