Bill Kearney wrote:

For this upcoming season I'm considering making
use of a PCMCIA modem bridged to a cellular network.

Hi, Bill,

Are you considering a modem because of lack of stations available, or
to be
able to do your internet under way, or some other reason?

I'm waiting for my Linksys 54GL to arrive (prolly today) to breadboard
the
LiteStation2 and see if I can't duplicate your results before swapping
out
the Senao on the mast...

In that case, I'd probably put my Vonage (VoIP telephony) unit on a Lan
port, and specify it for DMZ in order to get the most possible
bandwidth, rather than trying to have it do the router job. However,
even with the crappy Senao on the top of the mast, last weekend I got
more than 3 miles with it (over POE direct to the computer), while
under sail (albeit minimal heel).

For those not seeing my setup, it's an 8.5dBi omni stick antenna on
which Jeff has previously discussed reception and output patterns,
mounted to a cast aluminum NEMA box 62 feet in the air, powered and
data-fed over POE rather than separate wires or worse, coax with its
inevitable huge losses at that distance. Nonetheless, it seems to work
adequately, other than when we're over the AP I'm trying to reach (the
site is very close), in which case the small downtilt in the antenna
pattern doesn't get far enough down before it overshoots the target.
Of course, since I'll never use a marina, that won't be a problem once
I leave, in about a week...

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
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