Dudeness

Sorry, no photos... stumbling has quickly eaten the finances I'd been setting aside for a digital camera.

My present rig:

HP Omnibook 6000
Orinoco Gold
3dBi magnetic mount omni antenna from http://hyperlinktech.com
Garmin GPS II
ancillary cables to power the laptop and GPS and to connect them to each other, forming a long triangle


Comments:

First thing one should do when connecting a pigtail to the Orinoco is to lash it to the card using electrical or gaffing tape. Despite all the warnings I'd read about how fragile it is, it took me less than 24 hours to give mine an accidental off-axis tug that busted that darn tiny pigtail connector. Believe me: it'll bust if you fart across the room from it.

This rig (sans power cabling) fits easily in a smallish backpack. I run headphones out to hear the NS boings, and run the serial cable to my GPS, which I carry hand-held because in the canyons of Chicago's Loop it tends to lose tracking and require a reboot. During vehicular runs, the GPS is on the dash, laptop on the back seat (safer that way -- I'm less tempted to look down every time I hear a boing), and the mag omni is holding fast to the roof through any and all (relatively sane) driving conditions.


Future plans:

Current rig is a bit too heavy for long walks, so I'm looking toward an HP Jornada 568 with a PC-card adapter. What I'd *really* like is a PDA with dual-PC-card slots that can accomodate the Orinoco and a GPS card (like Pharos' iGPS-CF), but for example Compaq's dual adapter looks like the slots are too close together to fit both without modifying one card or the other. (Comments?) Either that, or someone needs to make a PDA with a built-in Wi-Fi that has provision for external antennae (none so far on the market, as far as I can tell).

Barring a two-card solution, I'll probably go for a Garmin GPS V. My GPS II has held up well for the last 5 years, especially considering how many times it has taken dives off dashboards without dying. It's rugged for sure. Unfortunately, it was also Garmin's last model with the 8-satellite receiver -- it only gives about 30-35 feet of accuracy at best, when a 12-sat model will do 8-12.

Finally, I'm really wanting a high-gain parabolic antenna now. I went sailing on Lake Michigan over the weekend but didn't pick up any sites, probably because the omni couldn't pick individual APs out of the wall of noise (plus, of course, a good third of my horizon was nothing but water).


Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention the most important component of my stumbling rig: a highly amused and supportive wife who's totally behind me in my latest obsession.