Operation: Bouncy Castle

· anoduck's blog

An exploration in wifi radio Frequencies. #

Preface #

A means to connect with a 2.4GHZ device located over 2100 meters away was needed. So, a deployment facilitating a satellite dish and a bester antenna was developed. The satellite dish would bounce wifi signals from the target area and reflect them to a collector that would be in the form of a bester antenna specifically designed for 2.4GHZ. The first prototype was created employing aluminum plates for the bester elements, but later this configuration was discarded due to it being fragile, and easy to deform. A second prototype was created using steel for all parts of the antenna, but the results are less than impressive, and after a few days the parts rusted from exposure to the humidity in the air. Regardless, the second prototype is being used until a third attempt is warranted.

Design #

I cannot claim any brilliance to the creation of this setup, it all came from the mind of the admin at Wifi Antennas Dot Com. If you have not visited the site already, you probably should, it holds more designs for wifi antennas than anywhere else currently found on the internet. For our particular build the bester antenna was chosen as it provides an excellent directional beam from which to direct at the focal point of a parabolic reflector (satellite dish). Fortunately, the admin of wifi-antennas had done the majority of the legwork, having testing hundreds of different variations of the bester, he had already optimized the design to a proven specification. For the reflector, having three dishes within possession that could be used. The largest of these, a former satellite dish used for Hughesnet was selected for the build. There was also plenty of RG-6 on hand to connect the antenna to the amplifier.

Parts List #

These are the parts that were aquired and used for the build.

Build #

The build itself was full of numerous complications and difficulties. One does not wake up in the morning and simply think, 'today I shall build an antenna.' Materials must be gotten, and plans on how to build need to be set to minutest of detail. Almost every step of the build was very difficult to achieve with a measurable amount of success.

  1. Cutting perfectly circular plates for the antenna elements proved considerably more difficult than expected. For this, an angle grinder was utilized with various discs. When a large "D"-shaped clamp was mounted to a vice to expose as much of the surface as possible, this produced plates that were round enough to create an illusion of a circular shape. Due to the large angle grinder used, the thicker plates were the easiest to work with. The thinner plates were actually cut out with a pair of tin snips.
  2. Cutting pipe squarly was also a challenge. This is primarily due to the small size of the spacers needed. The 5.5mm spacer was obviously the most difficult to cut with an angle grinder. Contrary to conventional thinking, a larger pipe cutter worked better than the smaller cutter as it required less force to rotate. Using a micrometer to check appropriate thickness, this eventually provided to create spacers that were close enough to not argue about.
  3. Fabrication of the parts was suprisingly the easiest part, as assembling brought for man unexpected complications.