Is home-made best?

Following a talk down the pub the other night, Mike Harris of Psand went and checked the unused, 5 years old, home-made wireless cantenna on the roof of his current digs that used to connect to Bristol Wireless’ network and it still worked!

Anyway, here’s the story in his own words:

Hi All,

Just thought you’d all be interested to know that today I connected up to the ECC and got on Bristol Wireless using the famous first “cantenna” that we every put up, made out of a tin that J&B whiskey comes out of by Dave Gough at Psand and the one that features in the old trusty article at http://flakey.info/projects/bristolwireless/ !

Having been put up in 2002 (May or July I think), it went out of service some time in 2003 and today I dug out an N-type to Buffalo-style pigtail I have, and got on-line by connecting to the bw-ecc AP (after finding another two out there as well). The antenna is still in the exact same position as can be seen here.

A little rustier but nonetheless functional. Gave me a link quality of 18/92, not really high but enough.

Proof is sort of:

eth4 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:”bw-ecc” Nickname:”HERMES I” Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422 GHz Access Point: 00:0B:6B:4F:53:

Being as I was there at the beginning when we put the node up, I felt a warm glow of nostalgia. We’ll have it in operation from now on as our connection to the BW network.

I’m going to take a photo of it as it now is and update the BW article and the how to build a cantenna article with it. Perhaps we can get on Slashdot again eh?

Any old Buffalo base stations or DEC multias kicking around to connect to it perchance?

Cheers,

Mike.

Thanks for the news Mike! You’ve thrown down a few challenges there.

Nowadays we’re using commercially made antennae for connection. However, the old whiskey tin did have certain benefits, especially for lovers of single malt scotch. 🙂

Update 28/04/07: Mike informs us he intends to give the cantenna a bit of a workout this coming weekend by using it for streaming Radio Vague’s occasional Sunday Roast spot!