2 Mar
2020
2 Mar
'20
7:38 p.m.
On 3/2/20 1:23 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
Yup, there are many rules covering that sort of thing. I follow the
rules of ham radio religiously, but essentially ignore the other ones.
I tried to care, but I just couldn't make it happen. Sitting in the
middle of hick-land West Virginia ("Psst, hey sis, you awake?") I needed
a connection to civilization and would stop at nothing to get it.
Perhaps amusingly and somewhat related, on that same trip, I was so
bored at one point that I decided it was time to re-up my long-expired
ham radio license. I brushed up on the rules, and drove to neighboring
Maryland for a hamfest. I took and passed all three tests in one
sitting, walked in with no license (but with ham radio experience) and
walked out with paperwork for a soon-to-be-issued Extra class ticket.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
I did
something very similar about ten years ago. I was stuck in
rural West Virginia for several months dealing with a family estate. It
was a huge house on a gigantic piece of land, and was awesome in just
about every way, except unbelievably isolated. No network access of any
kind available there, except Hughes satellite, which is unusable for
really much of anything.
I put DDWRT on a WRT-54G, paired it with a small Yagi, and scanned
around. I ended up pointing it at the lights on a distant mountaintop
on the other side of the valley, and, as you said, bingo. We ran with
that for about nine months. I still have no idea of whose connectivity
that was.
The complication: if you operate this as a ham radio link, you're fine with high
power or gain antennas, but you have to make it ID, and you have to worry about the
traffic carried. On the other hand, if it's a Part 15 device (the usual mode) then
the gain antenna might not be legal. (I don't actually know the rules, but I would
think that EIRP limits are part of it, and/or type acceptance certificate rules that say
you can't modify the design.)