The following article was written by VK4ION

NEXT G WIRELESS INTERNET - Making it work in rural Qld

This article follows on from VK4UD's Wireless webpage.

Please read the VK4UD Wireless page as Bob really did the hard yards in working out ways to temporarily boost your wireless internet signal when you don't have the luxury of living beside a transmission tower.

Being 25km North of Bundaberg and no available copper lines from the local telephone exchange I was reluctant to invest in changing to Wireless unless I was sure I could significantly improve the performance of my existing (Satellite) service.

Fellow club member VK4UD and brought his Bigpond modem and a laptop out to my place and we hooked it up to my 2M 4 element yagi that was pointing more or less towards town.

WHOA! the speed was immediately evident and we had two laptops on wireless both streaming video into the house. That settled it. We knew we could get Bigpond Next G wireless with an external antenna - and just imagine how good it would be with a beam actually cut to 800MHz.

The next step was to read up.... There is some vague material floating about on the internet and some of it is downright incorrect so be prepared to use your common sense. The guy who modeled a decent antenna is Phil - check out his VK7JJ article on Next G Yagi.

Yes I know you can buy at least 10 different types of commercial antennas but I haven't purchased a commercial one yet so why start now. The retail version costs at least $200 this one cost less than $10.

Distance from Reflector to Director #6 is 670mm and the widest Reflector is 168mm so it's small, light and easy to work with at heights.

For the full story, specifications, discussion on polarization and photos of the build check out the VK4ION NextG Yagi project webpage.

Many thanks to those who shared their information and I hope I'm putting something back into the resource pool for others contemplating Wireless Internet.

What are these goats all about? Wise old billygoat teaching the young ones

A quick Web Search and you will find the article by VK7JJ. You'll also need the ACMA website to look for Next G towers in your area (search by postcode)

If you know of any other useable links please alert the webmaster so we can build up additional resources !

Grandpa Billygoat has become the symbol for Club-Member Help pages.

The young 'kid' at the top? - He's rushing about, looking for answers - which we hope he'll find here.