A DIYer's Quick Guide To Cheap Wireless Extension 148
An anonymous reader writes "This piece is described in one of the comments on it as 'a little piece of genius'... and I have to agree! Although Peter Cochrane seems a bit of a crack pot, the ways that he comes up with to get connected when he's out of range in the sticks are pure genius and he makes them appear really simple! Think old satellite dishes, USB dongles and plastic bags and you'd be on the right tracks to upping wi-fi signal by 4 bars." A perfect excuse to link to one of my favorite sites, if you want more details and photos on similar jury-rigged long-distance connections. However, your meterage may vary — I've found USB Wi-Fi devices to be pretty fickle under Linux, with some distros working way better than others.
Citywide Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Citywide Wireless (Score:4, Informative)
From Wikipedia. Used in the 1800's, at least. Would you like to reconsider your previous statement?
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The description you and the author are looking for is NOT "jury-rigged" - rigging a jury is a completely different thing!
The phrase you are looking for is "jerry-rigging", a racist term that comes from the even more racist "nigger-rigging" - just so you know.
Epic [wikipedia.org] Fail [alt-usage-english.org].
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Actually, jerry-rigging comes from the closing days of WWII when the Allies were advancing through western Europe. They would often find vehicles, structures and equipment that had been hastily repaired or assembled, or used in a way that differed from its original purpose. "Jerry" was a very common nickname for the collective German forces, hence any equipment found in this condition was "jerry-rigged."
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Crap, an anonymous coward. And a good thing, I guess, because you're mostly wrong.
"Jury-rigged" has been around for a few hundred years. Just ask any sailor (in the classic, wind-powered sense). A jury rig is a makeshift mast and sail arrangement that's put together when the main gear is damaged or destroyed. I can't quote definitively, but I'm pretty sure that "jerry-rigged" is a corruption of jury-rigged. ...aha! Google is my friend. And it will be yours, too. Look up the term. I'm right.
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Free... Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get nervous when folks start talking about "free" services. Seems that more often than not, "free" actually means that I end up paying for power, bandwidth, and the army of bureaucrats that makes sure those bills get paid on time, and that their uncle's brother's company wins next year's bid.
So, please, count me out. I'll rig my own parabolic signal booster if and when I feel like it.
Re:Free... Really? (Score:5, Funny)
...I'll rig my own parabolic signal booster if and when I feel like it.
That's my new sig sorted out then.
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Really? Do fire engines make you nervous, then? Or public water fountains? Street lights?
You must be a nervous wreck in any city.
As a practical matter, for humans to live in cities (and at this level of population and industry, a lot of us have to - more than half the human race now lives in cities [guardian.co.uk]), a number of public goods and common goods must be provided.
We can certainly debate whether "free" wi-fi should be one of them, but to get ups
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You see the poster you were replying to was a productive member of society and therefore he pays taxes. That means that all
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Allow me to clarify, then: Discussion of novel "free" services makes me nervous.
Every "free" (meaning, of course, tax-supported in one way or another) service I could possibly want, and a great many more I believe should not be "free", are already provided by my current city.
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Where do you live that this is the case? That's a tremendously stupid way to run things: "Ah, my kitchen is on fire, but it'll cost money for my insurance deductable if I call it in. I'll put it out myself with the garden hose...Whoops! It was a grease fire! It's spreading! Now the whole block will burn down."
Out in the mi
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Actually, I'd be fairly happy with "free, as in use" with perhaps some injected google-ads or something of the sort on the http stream (not other ports/procols, of course, since that could break stuff).
You'd probably have to block or severely limit P2P/torrents as well in many cases, but it would be great for those that need quick access to check some information online.
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I know a bunch of ISP's tried to inject ads and various other things into the content of their paying customers. At times without informing them, at others while informing them will as obtuse terms as possible.
However, I do remember free dialup ISP's that used the ad-model. I fail to see why it would end up if court if the service was known to be provided gratis based on an ads model?
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The cold war has really messed you up. Corporations are not the only way to do things efficiently.
Cooperation can work easily, in some very particular cases. Public doesn't mean state-run.
An antenna by itself is useless. If you get together with other people who share your interests, you can build a small network, that allows you to reach other people and for example play low latency games.
In rural areas, it's better to have a free, fast alternative to whatever there is available, even if it's not up 24/7.
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Paranoia sounds about right. Even when there is no measurable harm from using a neighbor's wifi when your service is unavailable, you'll still here people indignant about your "stealing". These fearmongers would be happier if it were criminalized to the point where nobody could share, even if they wanted to.
It only takes a few nutjobs [slashdot.org].
Is that an ultra ultra strict strawman? (Score:2)
Ha! That wasn't me. It restores my faith in humanity to see a few people think you take cheap shots, and few find you interesting and insightful. But, who am I to say you won't do better some day? I let you have the last word on our long thread, so take your victory and move on.
As for my sig, I choose what goes there. I suggest you don't concern yourself with it, since it doesn't misrepresent you.
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That sounds like a fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc
Wrong! There's no assumption of causation. You've butchered a Slashdot favorite (usually phrased as correlation != causation) That's pitiful. I rest my case.
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Nobody wants it! (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Pittsburgh, there is occasional talk of some group trying to do this. There have been some people who have received funding, but they waste it, and their project evaporates. Between ten and twenty (or more) companies start off here, and either fade away, or move to some other city. telerama [telerama.com], hobnob [hobnob.com] are the two that stick out (for which I remember URLs to).
Largest public network here is run by ONE GUY who just went and built it himself, Shadyside WiFi [shadysidewifi.com].
Otherwise, there is chatter on some of the local lists, but by and large, nobody wants free city-wide wireless Internet. Just me [pghwireless.net].
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Of course, I'm referring to it as a city-like community despite being our state capitol since if things don't change it'll be off the most declining cities lists by caveat of being too small to qualify. =)
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I am one of those long-time WiFi zealots, and it is clear to me that people just don't want free ubiquitous wireless internet -- or they just don't care. Here in Pittsburgh, there is occasional talk of some group trying to do this.
Oh, I wanted it, I just didn't want it enough to pay the monthly fee for it, and signing up every other day for two free hours to use it for ten minutes was an aggravation. I have internet at work, but needed to get around my corp firewall to support my moonlighting :')
If I could have got a deal for a pay-as-you-go plan for a reasonable price I'd have taken it. Then I moved to a different building and couldn't get a signal anymore. So I threw up a Linux box at home listening to SSH on port 443, and tunnel
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So I threw up a Linux box at home listening to SSH on port 443, and tunnel out from work using Putty. I just look like encrypted web traffic to the corp security folks."
Sometimes a firewall or network monitor will flag that traffic as abnormal. There's often much more upstream traffic on that link than you would expect from https.
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WiFi was never designed for ubiquitous coverage. That doesn't mean other people don't want the coverage, they're just aware of the costs/benefits.
*googelstalks you* Ahh. Maybe I can have Bryan walk over and bop yo
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Sure, their hotspots are still all over, but their business shut down and went away, dumped their hosting and ISP customers. Aren't you on the WPLUG list?
blanketing the whole city is it COSTS TOO MUCH to do that with WiFi
By using DSL to provide the access at each site, then yes -- it is too expensive. I would think that it would be easier to use bridge/repeaters in convenient places -- but then again you get into saturation, and that ends up being expe
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When God was handing out WEP passwords
were you in the line getting both #3 and #4 keys?
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Heh. We've had people talking this talk since 1998 now, but whoever had tried to walk the walk discovered how hard it is to make work. These guys [funkfeuer.at] actually implemented something along those lines.
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What does "never been copyrighted" mean? It was copyrighted when it was produced. Maybe it was released into the public domain, but unless that actually happened...
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yes it would be nice.
Oh wait, I've been helping a group locally do just that for over 6 years now. It used to be possible before the Cable companies and telcos started making it illegal.
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Re:Citywide Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be much more helpful to protect people from litigation when they open up their wireless networks to strangers. The only thing preventing me from providing free wifi is the tremendous risk of being sued and eventually having to pay for someone else's crimes.
If you've been wardriving lately, you know that we don't need more access points, we need existing access points to be opened.
MOD THIS UP! (Score:5, Interesting)
I rarely do this, but this AC is making the only point that needs to be made here. My own home router could comfortably serve a block of my neighborhood including the nearby park (I tried) but I'm not going to open it up because under US law I will go to jail if someone uses my open WiFi to download childporn or some such.
The cost to me would be minimal and I'd set the QOs such that the freeloaders wouldn't interfere with my own activities -- and if everybody did that, we'd already have free ubiquitous wifi in all cities in the US. Because there's always some server around somewhere -- it's been forever since I truly got a "NO networks found". They're just all locked down like crazy because of the absurd US laws that hold a communications provider (me!) responsible for what clients do with the services they provide for free out of the goodness of their hearts...
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Oh really? And you can cite cases of people this has happened to? Or are you just speculating?
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If the RIAA is able to successfully sue/prosecute people based off of IP logs, you can be damn sure the CP police can. At least when you're in control of the router, you may be able to trawl through logs and find the MAC associated with the illegal download and hunt down the right person, but don't count on it.
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Or trawl through logs to show that the MAC associated with the illegal download does not belong to any user in the household.
If a murder suspect leaves footprints to your doorstep, it might make you look like a suspect, if upon inspection there is no match to shoe size or brand of shoe in your home, then you are ruled out as a suspect.
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That works a lot better with shoes than it does with MAC addresses. It's a heck of a lot easier to make a computer disappear than change the size of a household member's foot (the shoes themselves are probably easier to get rid of than a computer). I should think that in either situation if the criminal was in the house that he/she would be smart enough to remove the incriminating object, or at least that a jury would assume that this had occurred. That said, we still theoretically have an innocent-until
I did that, and found the MAC address, but... (Score:2, Funny)
apparently DE:AD:BE:EF:DE:AD:BE:EF is some guy named Peter Shipley [google.com], and he just laughed at me when I called him up and asked him about it.
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Or in tehr words, groundless speculation and fear mongering.
mod that down (Score:3, Insightful)
"...under US law I will go to jail if someone uses my open WiFi to download childporn or some such.
No, you won't go to jail, but you might get investigated and have some equipment confiscated, which is still enough reason for most people not to do it.
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It's nice in sentiment. In reality though, it doesn't work. See, ISPs do need to be profitable to stay in business. The way they do that is by making money on the bandwidth they sell. At the price bandwidth goes for these days, they really cannot stay profitable if every single person were to use every mbit of their bandwidth all the time. People who torrent a lot or keep their bandwidth use maxed otherwise generally cost the ISP more than the monthly payment. It's those other low-use customers who simply d
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You might be happy having other people subsidising your internet usage, but the other lighter users probably aren't that happy about paying more so you can download whatever it is you download.
I'm glad you qualified your position with "Personally", but in the scheme of things it seems a bit ridiculous to have pricing that absolutely relies on people not actually using the full service that they're paying for. Put simply: the ISPs are advertising something they cannot possibly deliver, and are relying on peo
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You might be happy having other people subsidising your internet usage, but the other lighter users probably aren't that happy about paying more so you can download whatever it is you download.
For the most part, I'm pretty sure those people don't mind. Most of those kinds of people prefer to pay extra for extra capacity they won't use 99% of the time, just so they have it available in that rare situation where they do want it. Not that I'm saying I think it's right or fair that other people help subsidize my own bandwidth usage. But it seems to me, most users like the current situation.
but in the scheme of things it seems a bit ridiculous to have pricing that absolutely relies on people not actually using the full service that they're paying for. Put simply: the ISPs are advertising something they cannot possibly deliver, and are relying on people simply not being able to find enough to do on the internet so they don't have to provide the service they sold their customers.
It does *seem* ridiculous, and you'll get no argument from me on that count. But any alternative system will mea
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I have absolutely no problem with that. Also, if you don't have the know-how to secure your network while allowing strangers to use the internet connection, don't open it.
But there are people who want to provide free wireless internet and know how to do it safely. As long as these people have to risk their livelihood providing a free service, it's not going to happen.
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It has nothing to do with securing my network, and everything to do with using up my bandwidth, dumbass. Comprehend much?
Besides, you can't just provide free wireless Internet unless your ISP tells you that you can. Providing Internet access to your home has a cost involved, you know. It's not just "providing a service" - it's breaking the rules. So, even if nobody ever got you in trouble by doing illegal things online, on your connection, or if you were immune to such charges - you can still get sue
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Saskatoon Saskatchewan Canada has free citywide internet. It's slow as a dog during the day but quite usable at night for basic browsing/emailing etc. Great for us touring musicians!
Here is another smaller scale hack using a metal strainer/steamer [instructables.com] as a collector.
But a satellite dish will only help the reception, not the access point on a city-wide basis, so it's benefits are limited. However, it might give hope to cottagers where wifi is close but not quite.
What the article describes as going from zero b
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Coral Cache link... (Score:1, Informative)
Rhombic Antennas (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know of any attempts to use Rhombic Antennas [tpub.com] with WiFi? They're very simple and provide huge gain. Their typical downside is that the length of one leg needs to be 8-12 wavelengths, which means they're the size of a football field when you're dealing with most radio frequencies, but 2 GHz has a 0.15m wavelength. A point-to-point rhombic should easily fit on the roof of a house.
Re:Rhombic Antennas (Score:4, Informative)
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I suspect these antennas are typically aimed at much lower frequencies (say HF/VHF), and require a ground plane. The reason why I think so is that for (super) high frequencies, antennas are mostly self-contained (one piece you can attach to a pole) and don't require a large garden and poles and the like.This is not the kind of structure you use for pleasure, but because you have to (at low frequencies).
There wouldn't be any reason why this would be worse at high frequencies than low frequencies. I could envision making a printed version of this on a very thick PCB and using the bottom copper cladding as your ground plane. Heck, a sheet of aluminum foil could probably do it in a pinch. The ground plane size at Wifi frequencies is not very large. I would guess the main reason that people haven't done this is why bother? The short wavelength of 2.4 GHz compared to everyday length scales means that it is
!news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:!news (Score:4, Informative)
Dont forget Pringles cans.
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How is this a troll? This *isn't* news. 2003 called, they want their slashdot stories back:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/19/0053233 [slashdot.org]
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Dude, what carrier is offering a temporal calling plan?
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Dude, what carrier is offering a temporal calling plan?
TARDIS Telecom, for one...
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How is this a troll? This *isn't* news. 2003 called, they want their slashdot stories back:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/19/0053233 [slashdot.org]
Read the first post on the article you lined to:
It was modded +5 insightful! If it's not news in 2003, it definitely isn't news in 2008.
Mod parents up (Score:2)
This is in no way offtopic. The linked articles are about exactly the same thing: using satellite dishes for wifi networking. The original article in fact dates back to June of '02.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/04/211208&mode=nested&tid=99 [slashdot.org]
Parent, GP, and GGP are all Informative.
if you have a few bucks to spend (Score:3, Informative)
Check out. [gnswireless.com]
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Did I mention I haven't gotten used to the new editor yet ? Duh. I meant to check "these guys" at gnswireless.com out.
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There are plenty of used satellite dishes on Craigslist and such for $20-50. Just pick up one of those and do as in TFA. Sure, you may not get a whole mile out of the deal, but if you can direct that at a nice neighbor's house...?
Try this.. the strainer WiFi.. cheap too! (Score:5, Informative)
My friend lives across the Ohio River and we're able to send the signal across the river that way.
Re: Another source (Score:3, Informative)
A link to an old writeup from one of my favorite professors: http://people.wallawalla.edu/~Rob.Frohne/Airport/Primestar/Primestar.html [wallawalla.edu]
Also, ditto on the !news.
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They stopped laughing when they realized it worked and worked well.
Simple Brilliance (Score:2)
The simplicity and brilliance of this idea is astounding.
Old news anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm too lazy to search for how many times the satellite dish wifi setup has been posted on slashdot, but suffice to say I had one on my roof 5 years ago after getting the idea from a web page that was itself a couple of years old. (even the actual useful link added on by the editor is from 2004)
It's not even a good writeup of the concept. Here's a summary of the "Genius":
-Stick it on the end of the arm.
-Electronics don't like water.
-The sun is hot.
There's nothing genius about this. It's a rehash of something people have done for years, sans details.
Can I draw your attention to... (Score:5, Interesting)
... my own comment, yesterday? [slashdot.org]
Not new (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone have any suggestions? (Score:1)
I always hear about projects like these. Could this be used to connect my brother and my houses if we don't have LOS? We're in seperate apartments, obfuscated by light trees, about 15 feet of elevation difference, and perhaps 4 brick walls.
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How to get long distance WiFi to work with ease (Score:5, Informative)
10 years ago you might have had to improvise, but today you can get cheap high quality antennas and amplifiers that is a lot better than a USB dongle in an old satellite dish.
My favorite source is http://www.hyperlinktech.com/ [hyperlinktech.com]
and you can do your link analysis here:
http://cgi.gbppr.org/wireless.main.cgi [gbppr.org]
If you really need big distances, you can use an old 12' sattelite dish, but otherwise stick to the formula above. It will save you a lot of time and trouble.
I have reliable links over 10km with 10mW running at 50Mb/s
It's not that easy (Score:5, Informative)
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Why use a unidirectional antenna with a dish? The dish focuses a wide beam (eg 45 deg) at the amp to a narrow beam (eg 1 deg) at a distance. The unidirectional antenna is already radiating at a narrow beam, so the dish will basically be a flat mirror for the signal, which will not help at all (as you noticed).
You should try with one or the other, not both.
Access more than one network? (Score:4, Interesting)
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> connect to more than one wifi network simultaneously
That's easy - just get a NIC/Wifi AP for each network you want to use.
You need load-balancing (Score:4, Informative)
I've been looking into a similar setup. You need multiple wireless adapters and a load-balancing utility.
http://forums.remote-exploit.org/archive/index.php/t-7419.html [remote-exploit.org]
A quick and dirty way to do it with Linux iptables:
http://tetro.net/misc/multilink.html [tetro.net]
My goal is to create a monster wardriving setup for constant on-the-road connectivity.
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You might read this article. [techworld.com]
This [google.com] might help too....
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I'm sure it's possible, I'm also sure you will need two wifi adapters (or one device that has two built in) since your neighbors are likely on different channels. I don't know of any software specifically int
What about sending????? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Because as we all know, parabolic dishes only work to receive and will not allow you to direct your emitted RF...
Oh wait... bouncy bouncy works both ways.
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There are EIRP limits. Basically you can't legally use a directional antenna to improve the signal on the sender side if you're already at the EIRP limit. The only benefit of the directional antenna in that case is that you can lower the emitter power and don't pollute the unused directions with your signal. To establish long-haul wifi connections legally, you need directional antennas on both sides to boost signal reception, not emission.
It will send fine too (Score:2)
Nothing to See Here (Score:1)
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It's jerry-rigged, not "jury-rigged," dammit!
Actually, it is "jury-rigged" [wikipedia.org].
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Not that Wikipedia is end-all be-all but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig [wikipedia.org]
It actually is "jury rigged" and "jerry rigged" is a recent bastardization of it.
Also works with WiMax (Score:2, Interesting)
Just tried on my balcony: WiMax box in front of old sat dish = ~ 30% higher transfer rate!
Linux use of Wi-Fire (Score:2, Informative)
Best Way to boost WiFi Signals (Score:2)
Not news... (Score:4, Interesting)
The advantage of the USB dongle is that you don't incur the line losses of the antenna cable if your laptop/PC is a long way from the dish. You can get around the problem of USB cable-length limitations by using some nifty USB "extension cords" which are basically a long USB cable with a 1-port hub at the end.
I will add one thing that I haven't seen on any pages, however. Most satellite dishes have the arm positioned away from the centerline axis of the dish... usually below it, which must be accounted for when aiming. For example, if the arm holding your dongle/cantenna is 10 degrees below the centerline of the dish, then you'll be receiving signals from whatever is 10 degrees above the centerline. It's the same concept as flat mirrors... angle of reflection equals angle of incidence.
Why does this matter? Well, if you are trying to communicate with a station that's at relatively the same elevation as you, then you're going to have to point the dish down toward the ground a bit. This can be very conspicuous... especially if, ahem, the other station's owner doesn't know you're communicating with them (cough, cough). The best solution that I've come across is to turn the dish upside-down so that the arm holding the dongle is on top, which allows you to point the centerline of the dish skyward again, so that it looks more like the other dishes in the neighborhood. Almost nobody will notice that the arm is affixed to the top of the dish rather than the bottom... and even fewer will grasp the ramifications of it.
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NASA uses spacebars.
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A submarine would have waterbars?