Fer your travelling cowfolk, RV laptop WIFI booster

[Adirondack Jack, SASS #53440]

If ya travel in an RV, you know WiFi fer yer laptop and tin cans on wheels don't always mix well. In my Hillbilly Airstream, signal that is 5 bars outside on the picnic table can be as little as one or two bars inside the metal trailer, most often only one.

 

I almost bought a $40 booster antenna that had only mixed reviews, then said "lemme try this".

 

Using my Ham radio knowledge of passive antennae, gave a quick and dirty shot at it that took all of ten minutes. I rounded up about 15 feet of automotive tail light wire (about anything would work) and a chunk of 1/2" cpvc water pipe to use for support for both ends of the passive antenna circuit.

A passive antenna circuit hooks to nothing. It simply "echos" signal from one end of it's circuit to the other, acting as a passive booster to get through walls, etc. It requires no power, and doesn't even have to be all that close to a resonant antenna length to work well enough.

 

First I cut about 12" of the CPVC in half, creating a half pipe that was intended to be a "hat" to sit on top the laptop's monitor frame, as they tell me the internal wifi antenna in most lappies resides inside the monitor shell at the top. To that I taped a loop of wire, and the rest of the wire ran out the trailer window (tiny hole in screen), and onward to about a 15" chunk of CPVC that serves as a mast for the other end of the wire that terminates in a loop about as big around as an egg. That bit of pipe is simply taped to the awning support on the trailer (though a cpvc Tee and a sheet metal screw or two would make a permanent mount, perhaps right on the corner molding of the trailer, leaving the antenna sticking up above the roof line a foot or so.

 

ANYWAY, it turned out the lappie end of the circuit worked even better when simply rested against the front of the laptop. I'm in WiFi heaven now, no lag, no failure to load pages, etc. with anywhere from 3 to 5 bars of signal, and it was just junk box stuff.....

 

http://photobucket.com/wifiboosterantenna

[Cheyenne Culpepper 32827]

Cooooooool! and here I spent $60 for one a couple months ago..

 

gotta try this out!

 

Cheyenne