Birders, You may see several test messages originating from Mendota Fire Tower Hawk Lookout at 3,018 feet elevation on Clinch Mountain west of Bristol Virginia. A team from the Bristol Bird Club is working to establish real time hourly reporting of the fall hawk migration from Mendota tower to Bristol Birders net and others. At 6:23 p.m. this evening, Mike Sanders and family had made a late-afternoon journey and hike to the base of the tower to assess Wi-Fi connection, cell phone and data transmission from the site. Simply put, Wi-Fi is connectivity. It connects us to our content and communications over our mobile phone, computer, media players and other devices - all without cumbersome cables. When we're on the move, such as operating at the Mendota Lookout, it lets us connect to the Internet. We believe we might be able to do this at Mendota without worrying about finding a wired network connection. That is Wi-Fi. In addition, we are currently working with Washington Co., VA officials to identify some of the technical support system there as well as evaluating the weather station equipment in place. Tom Hunter is shopping a remote weather station which the BBC would like to purchase which will transmit wireless weather data to a laptop computer at the base of the tower. This should provide up-to-the-second weather data for further studying the hawk migration. In addition, we would like to be able to access real-time weather map and forecast information right at the foot of the tower. Each day, when the count is completed, Tom Hunter returns home and translates his written field notes into a form on the website of the Hawk Migration Association of North America database for hawk migration. After that is all complete, you have been able to see the actual report by accessing the website of the database form. We hope, this season, to access that website and database directly from a laptop at the foot of the tower every hour throughout each daily hawk watch. We do not yet know for sure but believe you can go to the website at any minute and see the daily hawk county activity reported hour by hour to the current hour. We also hope to give you not only the weather but photos transmitted of major highlight events and big crowds at the lookout, even when you can't be with us. You may be able to see a list of who is at the tower, who is planning to be there, arrange with a friend to join and either text message or email your plans and the coordinator on the tower will know who is heading up in order to plan coverage for the rest of the day. Our cellphone test today were highly successful. We tried data transmission and text message and everything is working nicely. You may actually go to the website and, at this moment, look around. Please use the following url but remember that we have not set this up to hourly reporting and are a couple of weeks away from that if it is doable. http://hawkcount.org/day_summary.php?PHPSESSID=b2eb5deb1ae5a23e55dcf30171c5ba85 Stay tune. Wallace Coffey Bristol, TN