Pardon me for the late arrival, but I thought I'd chime in. I started stumbling the Calgary area a week or two ago. Right now I'm using my regular laptop (HP ZD7010CA) with its stock internal card and antenna, hooked up to a Garmin 60cs GPS. I'd like to switch to another machine for a couple of reasons - the lack of external antenna, and the fact that it seems nearly impossible to get some kind of external power source for the ZD. (120W 6.5A is a bit much for the average power point!)
I have an old Thinkpad 600 that I think would be perfect for the job, running Win98SE.. 32GB drive, 400mb RAM, etc, built from parts and such. The only problem seems to be that I made an error in buying a Linksys WPC54G PCMCIA card. NS absolutely refuses to acknowledge its presence. Anyone know where in Calgary I can pick up the necessary card, antenna, etc for stumbling, that will work on the Thinkpad?
I live outside Calgary, but I work in the city. So I have been trying to do a stumble run every time I go out, taking a different route. I actually end up learning more about the city and its layout, and have some fun overall.
I've also stumbled Bragg Creek, Redwood Meadows, the Springbank area, parts of Cochrane, along Highways 8, 22, 1, and 1A into the city, and intend to keep going - I end up covering a lot of ground on the west side of the city in the course of business and personal activities. I may also make some trips to the other sides of the city too.
I have been archiving my runs into a single NS1 file, and so far I've logged 1411 sites, 693 with WEP. What surprises me, to be honest, is the amount of 'new' sites I've located (according to what I've uploaded to Wigle). I'm showing that 800+ of the ones I've picked up are new to Wigle... I would have thought that as a raw newbie, everything would have been found already. Actually, I'm happier that there's stuff for me to find. It makes it more fun, to tell you the truth.
I do something similar to stumbling in terms of radio communications as well. Again, the thrill of discovery is one of the big draws for me. It's also fun to see what is going on in and around the city.
Quick question regarding Calgary and area - is there any page that could be considered up to date with a list of freenets and/or paynets in Calgary area? The page at
http://www.infoport.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=333-379-616 seems to be the one that Google likes most. I'm a little doubtful of its upt-to-date-ness, though; I haven't found any 'netwireless' SSIDs at all, and the URL doesn't work any more from the page. Also, the 'NEWT' SSID hasn't shown up despite me driving near that location a few times.
Anyway, glad to be here, and hope to get some good scans in in the future!