chittnp

Hi, Im new to the forums so I will do my best not to ask any "stupid" questions

anyway..I have an emachines M6805 laptop with a built in 802.11G adapter. It works fine around my house and in my back yard, but I would like to increase the range a little. There is a park approximately 175 meters from my back yard that I would like to be able to go to and have wireless access. I cant really mount a LOS antenna because I live in an apt and I think the landlord might object, so I am looking for a way to add a more powerful antenna to the laptop. I was thinking I could disable the onboard radio and get either a usb or add on card adapter for my laptop and hook up a better antenna to it. so here are my questions:

which adapters that work with netstumbler will let me easily add an external antenna (by easily i mean without tearing it all apart and soldering)

would it really be necessary to disable the onboard adapter when I use the add on card? or will it just show up as another Icon in my connection settings?

which adapter/antenna combination do you recommend? what works best for you? anyone else tried this from a laptop with onboard wireless?

since I have the Linksys wrtg54, I was toying with the idea of using the Sveasoft firmware to increase routers signal output and maybe adding a LOS antenna to it that I could keep inside, the only problem is that between me and the park (which is on the otherside of the block) are a house, some trees and a fence, and like I said before my landlord would object to any external antennas) so the antenna would have to sit inside on my window sill. another option I have is buying another AP and larger antenna and putting them in my car, which I could drive to the park, hopefully the AP would pbe able to pick up the signal from my router and then I would be able to surf the web from the AP in my car. as long as I dont have it turned on while Im driving, I shouldnt violate any FCC regs..I think.

anyway...any suggestions or ideas would be appreaciated!

Bzillins

Well the easiest thing that you could do is get a directional antenna of some sort and mount it facing toward the park. Foliage and wood will cause a loss but nothing that would make the connection unfeasable. If you bought a 10 -15 db antenna and connected it to the ab that **should** be enough of a boost to get YOUR signal to the park. As far as the laptop end i would just suggest a PCMCIA wifi card w/ an external jack.. search can help you with thatr as well as choosing an antenna

Hope it helped

__________________
"While the apple is on the tree it grows and becomes sweeter, when it decides it is ripe, it falls from the tree and begins to rot." ikarus 10-23-02

chittnp

well, I emailed the guys at fab-corp and they were a great help! I settled on ordering an Orinoco gold B/G combo card and an omni directional blade antenna for my laptop, I plan to add an antenna to my AP at some point in the future.

After some thought, I had toyed with the Idea of buying a pigtail to go from the internal Broadcom minipci card to the blade antenna, but after talking to the guys at fab-corp, they seemed to think that the PCMCIA card was a better option. the connectors on the Broadcom mini PCI card are U.FL Hirose, and they didnt have a pig tail that would work with those connectors and the blade antenna, so either pig tails would have to be made or the antenna itself would have to be modified, so expense and coaxial cable loss issues were a concern. Another thing that made me re-think this is that I would have to either leave the cover off the mini PCI slot on the bottom of my laptop, or drill holes in, niether of which were really appealing to me. another advantage teh PCMCIA card gives me is the option to hook it up to different antennas, all I need is the proper pigtail for the antenna...no messing around inside my laptop changing things around. Thanks to Jason at FAB-CORP for his help and recommendations! I recommend that anyone who is looking for gear to check out FAB-CORP!

Bzillins

Post your results....

__________________
"While the apple is on the tree it grows and becomes sweeter, when it decides it is ripe, it falls from the tree and begins to rot." ikarus 10-23-02

aahicnow

The other thing you may want to try and will not cost you much is adding a parabolic reflector to the existing anten. on your router. I was reading about them yesterday and most peps that have tryed them seem pleased with the results. Here is the link that lincomatic posted on the idea (very nice find btw linc)
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/

Bzillins

Oops.. tis a shame to forges to mention that... I even built one a ways back... It does work wonders although rather limited.....

__________________
"While the apple is on the tree it grows and becomes sweeter, when it decides it is ripe, it falls from the tree and begins to rot." ikarus 10-23-02

chittnp

That definately looks like a fun project for a rainy day! thanks for the link