Steve, I have run two Symphony cards running over a full time link of about 5 miles using two 24 dbi gain dishes. I live in portion of town that is best described as not fully developed yet. I don't recall the brand of my dishes but they sound very similar to yours. Each has about 50' of Beldon 9913 coax as feedline. I found that you must have absolute line of sight. No trees, buildings or anything else in the way. This was absolutely critical. You need to be able to see the other antenna directly and you need to have the antenna pointed almost perfectly since these types of antenna have only a 8 degree beam width. Also, your antenna you have may not be tuned for the right frequency. The proxim devices use approx. 2.4 GHz to 2.48 GHz. Yours may be tuned higher and therefore losses will be high. There are similar antenna purpose made for these frequencies - that's what I'm using.
My link was great in dry conditions but when the fog or clouds or rain rolled in it became unusable. I just could not get 5 miles running reliably except in the dryest conditions with just two symphony cards since they are only 100mW. 2.4 GHz is highly attenuated by moisture so in the morning when it is damp the links would go down. With 500mW on one end and a short cable on the other it worked better. With 500mW on both ends they have been working flawlessly for over 6 months. Bottom line is you need clear line of sight and more power for a reliable link.
Regards,
Ron Curry, KE6WED
I have some Proxim RangeLAN2 cards (very similar to the Symphony's), I cut the supplied antenna coax and put on standard connectors so I could use higher gain antennas. I've used inexpensive 23 dBi gain grid parabolic antennas with good success on my 5 mile path.
The link margin (measured using attenuators) indicated that a range of 3-4 times that would be attainable, provided the path remained clear.
I have also a WaveLAN link on 2.4 GHz that spans an urban 10 mile LOS.
-- Barry McLarnon VE3JF/VA3TCP | [email protected] Ottawa Amateur Radio Club | [email protected] Packet Working Group | http://hydra.carleton.ca
I have a link running between Linux boxes from my house rooftop (about 20 feet) to a friends rooftop (also about 20 feet) and it crosses over the Oklahoma City GM Factory, that is 4.65 statute miles. (GPS measured) The link spans through a rural part of Oklahoma City.
I'm using the Proxim Symphony ISA cards with the supplied antenna cut off and BNC connector soldered on the RG-174 coax. Then I have a BNC to Type-N adapter which goes to the SmartAmp power injector. From there I have some Andrews 1/2" hardline from the back room to the roof where the (500mW w/ 14dB receive gain) Teletronics SmartAmp is mast mounted feeding the high quality, inexpensive Superpheonix 24 dB gain grid- parabolic antenna. ($65) It's feed is RG-8/U with a type-N connector. The antenna itself, is cast in an magnesium-aluminum alloy, and is very sturdy looking. (Which is good for the Oklahoma Winds and hail) They are are quoted as 7.5 degree beamwidth, I run them vertically polarized, as the other end had an antenna-vision nearby.
I used the amp first to make sure it will work, and to fine tune everything. My goal (and reason for hardline) is to run without an Amp. With an Amp I could probably have used RG-58, as the Amp works fine down to 2 mW in.
My web page is at: http://members.home.net/k5okc/
73,
Steve, K5OKC
Using two Symphonies each with 50 feet of 1/2 inch Heliax runs dropping about 2 dB, the maximum range I was able to acheive was 7.4 miles line of site. I don't use any power amplifiers. I use the cards themselves without any modification, connected to 24 dBi semi Grid Pack antennas. ($67 each)
Currently I have a reliable 5 mile Symphony link that has been going for several months.
I just recently tested a successfull 62 Mile link using BreezeCom Access Point units. The link was full quality stable with 3 leds showing. (This is a new record)
Here are some webpages served over wireless links;
http://wlan.iarc.org - is a wireless-lan web server this is a mirrored site that is currently under construction and is not always connected.
http://wlan.4z4zq.ampr.org - is my home computer, when it is on you may try to look at its web. Its connected with a proxim card and uses a Hill as a relay station
http://www.iarc.org/~ronen/wlan.html - is my wireless lan project page
Hope thats answer your questions
Ronen 4Z4ZQ
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Name: Ronen Pinchook (4Z4ZQ) <[email protected]>
Israel Amateur Radio Club Digital Comm group Projects leader
http://www.ronen.org
http://www.ronen.ampr.org
http://www.iarc.org/~ronen
http://aldan.netvision.net.il/~ronen
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We have been using wireless ethernet over here in the South Bay/Silicon Valley metropolitan-area here in California for a while. Our equipment is all 2.4 GHz 802.11 DSSS techology. We have a couple wireless repeaters located in the hills. We have experimented with AX.25 over ethernet between the wireless repeater sites.
One repeater site is owned by Dave KE6MOW, in Montebello Ridge at an elevation of 1900 feet.
And one in Blackberry Hill (Los Gatos) that I maintain also at 1900 feet.
http://www.sbay.org/wvara-2000-08/repeater-list.html
http://www.sbay.org
The high speed wireless network antennas here at Carnegie are mounted on a tower above Hammerschlag Hall. This tower is the highest point on the campus. The 900 MHz WaveLan DSSS equipment is in the W3VC Carnegie Tech Radio Club "shack" on the fourth floor of Hammerschlag Hall. To reduce signal attenuation, we used thick and inflexible "hardline" coaxial cables.
The link interconnects several student homes in Oakland (65 miles away) to the Carnegie computer network in Pittsburgh. It also links in; one site in Squirrel Hill (60 miles away), and also provides a link to my house a mile away in Shadyside.
Asymmetric wireless networking:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/People/bmm/wireless.html
Bruce,
N3WFI
I've got a 7 mile P-T-P link using BreezeCOM Access Point's (100mw I think) using UNI-24 antennas. A friend of mine is using Orinoco cards over about a 4 mile link, also using UNI-24's. Check out http://www.bawug.org for some other info.
--
Steve Rubin / KG6DFV
Green Bay Professional Packet Radio is where it started for me. Amazing what a small group of local hams working together can do. Everything from home-brew bi-directional amplifiers & transverters to path loss calculators and other link / design software and so much more.
The ARRL High-Speed Multimedia working groups paper On Amateur Radio Use of IEEE 802.11 is a good read. There is also a generalized mailing list ([email protected]) to learn and discuss.