ADs: Re: [IBWiFi] campus signal

Hi

I believe a dish antenna always increases signal, no matter what kind of RF signal, and of course if you respect all technical requirements to build such antenna.

The problem is that you will need to really point it at the source like a flash light...If you dont you will probabily loose signal. They are very, very directive. I have done experiments with a 6 foot dish antenna here and that is what I found out..

But there is hope...as I type this, my antenna is picking up a access point at almost a mile from my house and Im using about 50 feet of 213 coax cable from the antenna to the WIFI PCI card. on my desktop.

Im now using a high gain grid antenna, that looks like this one, which is also directive but has a fairly wide beamwidth in practice:

http://www.caworldwifi.com/images/P/30dbParabolicGrid_2.4GHz.jpg

and a smaller version here: http://www.rfshop.com.au/Portals/22/Pictures/Puddlenet.JPG

and gives me good results with a 25dBi gain with about 3 feet reflector. None of those home made antennas come even closer.

To greatly improv your system you can also attach a AP in client mode close to the antenna and run down the CAT5 cable, instead of coax cable, which I will do here in the near future (check the pic below) , and then you would have a good setup and internet for all computers in the house, but that is another story.

http://kvilleinternet.com/images/vettclose.jpg

Regards

Rod

----- Original Message -----
From: dirtfarmer
To: InternetByWiFi@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 10:02 PM
Subject: [IBWiFi] campus signal

My son lives two miles from his college campus. There is campus-wide wi-fi supplied for him. He would like to be able to receive it from his home. I know very little about this but have been reading some. Is it realistic to expect to receive his signal with a dish network dish with some USB device at the focal point? If not, would a ten ft big C-band dish do it? Has anybody tried a ten ft. dish?

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