Diary of a Not-spot – the final chapter Following seven years of dogged pursuit, the not-spot is now not-a-not-spot, sustaining connectivity a shade under 4Mb/sec: fast enough to finally join the 21st century. An improved antenna and radio, have tipped the balance to enable a microwave link at more than five times the previous best of 700Kb/sec, despite the …
If it survives tonight it will probably survive anything. Gonna be a little breezy up here, particularly if you're on the west coast.
Otherwise this is a really impressive project. My dad's house on harris is miles form the exchange but fortunatley he can still get broadband (albeit at around 1Mb/s). There is also the (expensive option) on harris of hebridies net. www.hebridies.net. Which can give up to 2Mb/s.
Meanwhile, a km or three further down the now-extended beam, a couple of homes are wondering why their WiFi no longer works as fast as it used to (or is/are there only hills and sheep in the line of fire)?
Unintended consequences and all that.
Nice anyway though.
Gas is overrated (and overpriced).
Megaphone because when everybody has them they're useless. Just like raising the transmit power on everybody's WiFi, or (in some cases) getting a more focused longer distance beam on the WiFi.
"If any equipment you make cannot survive or at least be adjusted then you fail."
Indeed. So if you put up a 20dB gain aerial and in due course someone in the high gain beam sets themselves up an ordinary home WiFi setup, you get an extra 20dB of their signal coming down the antenna lead. More, actually, because you have a roof (not indoor) aerial. But it'll be OK as long as they're on a different channel, after all there are plenty of channels to go round aren't there.
It's a good solution in certain specific circumstances, such as (hopefully) these.
Just don't forget the EIRP rules, that's all.
One person's explanation of how the EIRP stuff works:
http://huizen.deds.nl/~pa0hoo/helix_wifi/linkbudgetcalc/wlan_budgetcalc.html
If you can boost the output power by 20dB then your transmitted signal will go further. However, unless the equipment you're talking to has also ticked the box, their transmissions back to you won't have the added ooomf (technical term) so won't reach you - or the SNR won't be high enough to sustain the same data rate in both directions.
Whether the kit you've got has the smarts to deal with that sort of asymmetry would be an interesting thing to know
P.S. In that sheep field you had to dig up, how close together do you plant your sheep?
I feel your pain on the delivery surcharge, I tend to check delivery charges before I order, especially the ones claiming free UK mainland delivery, any surcharge and they don't get my business. The best recently was a shop I was in during a work trip to Birmingham, checked their site when I got home. It had the UK mainland claim, but then hidden away once you ordered was to choose Highlands, and the charge was GBP 27, by comparison they would ship the same item to Australia for GBP 32.
Of course from next month when the ASA can investigate web based adverts.......
I'm paying for all of Clare's broadband, she gets a free ride to check Facebook and browse eBay which is (for the moment) the limit of her interest. Now I'm capable of using the majority of her broadband (the ADSL tops out around 4.9Mb/sec) it could become an issue, and the day when we both want to watch iPlayer at the same time will come.
But not for a while.
Bill.
I didn't bother when it came to our village (In sunny Cambridgeshire...). Septic tank works fine (we empty once /year although don't need to) at about £70. Much cheaper than being on the main drain and since the rest of village went on the water table has dropped so soakaway works better.....
Use cylinder gas for cooking, oil for heating. Spend about £75/year on gas bottles. Oil is pretty expensive though.
And yes, I did say Cambridgeshire, that haven of hi tech and modernity.
That Maplin pole is of no use, wind gusts of 87mph are forecast for tonight.
I can foresee your horse bolting!
An aluminum scaffold pole and a couple of "A" frames should work but you might want to run a lightning conductor for peace of mind.
Folk here got hit and every electrical fitting in the house exploded,Then after destroying the fuse box it tracked along the Earth bonding to below the kitchen sink. Following the water mains under the wall until the pipe exploded lifting several flag stones outside.
Your insurance policy would probably not cover you so be warned.
Maybe the mast is not such a bad idea as it's not attached to the house.
So you have mounted a solwise box on Claires 'ancient house' but does she have another more suitable structure that she might prefer you to mount from? say a tree? or a mast hidden away behind the garage or even a nearby telegraph pole? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/23/bt_ofcom/)
Poles are not stupidly expensive if you needed one, and if regulation allows.
http://www.totalpoles.co.uk/new-telegraph-poles.html
I had a wire mesh antenna for awhile and ran into a serious problem that ended up zapping my router. The wire mesh builds up a static charge in winds. This static charge will find a way to ground ("earth" in UK I believe) using whatever path it can, including via the front end of your router! So run a thin wire from the mesh itself down to a good solid ground/earth connection, such as a grounding/earthing rod. It doesn't protect against lightning, but it does protect against the far more common problem of wind-induced static.
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