My new WiFi adapter for the boat arrived yesterday and I am very
impressed with the early test results. It is a high power USB adapter
with provision for an external antenna, and not particularly
expensive:

http://wlanparts.com/product/NUB-362EXT

I'm using it with an 8.5 db omnidirectional antenna mounted about 25
feet above the water and fed with 30 feet of low loss coax.

The drivers installed very quickly and cleanly, and the client
software allows scanning and selection for all available access
points.

It is very significantly better than my previous best, which was a USB
Rangemax adapter mounted about 20 feet above the water.

Thanks to Glenn Ashmore who pointed out this unit in a previous post.

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:51:30 GMT, Shortwave Sportfishing
wrote:

8.5 db vertical? Way cool.

What are you using as a ground plane?

The whole thing is encased in fiberglass so the exact construction is
difficult to determine. There is an aluminum decoupling sleeve at the
bottom where the co-ax exits, and that is also the mounting point for
the U-bolts. I'm guessing, but suspect that inside the fiberglass are
some stacked co-linear elements, perhaps center fed but I don't know.
The frequencies are at about 2400 MHz so you can fit a lot of 1/4 wave
segments in a small space.

You can buy them at CompUSA stores:

http://tinyurl.com/s6vkg

Looks like they are now claiming 9 db gain.

I just ordered a wardriving setup with a low speed Orinoco 802.11b card
and an antenna. Wish I had seen this thread before. Anyway the seller
has this site that takes a Linksys wireless router and makes it into a
fully automated Wireless Internet Service finder and router.

I don't know much about this stuff, but here is the link

http://linksysco.com/box.php

Comments?

Norm
S/V Barbara Ann Swift 40
Green Cove Springs Marinia, FL