Richard T Nechanicky wrote: > Fedex-ing the antenna is not an option since I am > often at multiple locations within the same > week...portability was unfortunately a major criteria > for selection. > > I do have the cisco cards (350s), and agree that they > kick out more than 100mW, but they will not (to my > knowledge) connect to the antennas I am looking at. Do you have the PCM series or the LMC series ? Nate has first hand experience hooking the LMCs to external antennae; you have to get out the soldering iron to add a pigtail to the PCM series, I believe. > You may be able to help me jerry rig it, and if so by > all means please do (this is something I would like to > get out of this mailing list). Otherwise I will have > to use one of my Orincos which are about 100mW...The I thought Orinocos had a lower output power. One of mine has the FCC ID: IMRWLPCE24H, hunting that down through the FCC web site leads me to a test report: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/retrieve.cgi?attachment_id=226897&native_or_pdf=pdf Page 28 states that the output power is approx 14dBm, or around 25mW. Are there high power Orinoco cards out there ? The FCC ID for the Cisco cards is: LDK102040 and the reports confirm the 100mW output power. > only reason I am getting the 100mW is because that was > all the vendor had below 250mW and it was thrown in at > no additional cost (i.e. package deal). > > Let me know if you (or anyone else out there) knows > how I can hook the cisco card up to an external > antenna. Assuming that it's not a LMC-series card (in which case it's a MMCX [thanks to Nate for that detail], and a simple pigtail is all that is needed), you may want to try and retro-fit a pig-tail to a PCM series card, but it'll probably be an irreversible change. Here's a photo of a Linksys card doctored in this manner: http://www.geocities.com/andyw_lala/wpc11-pigtail.jpeg Internally, many PCMCIA cards have a tiny connector before the built-in antenna, which is used during manufacturing test. You can remove this connector and solder a pigtail directly to the card as shown in the photo above. I've not done this mod on a Cisco card. Violates the FCC type approval, but if you're trying to make a piece of test equipment, and it'll still be within the rules, I don't see a problem. YMMV. You sound like you know your way around this kind of system well enough, but the biggest problem people have at these extended ranges is building a balanced system, IMHO. Your task is doubly complex because it sounds like you cannot modify the other end of the link, so any gain you add to your tx path needs to be added to your rx path also. It is easier to add tx gain than useful rx gain, so you might end up being rx limited. The orinoco cards seem to be very well balanced, the output power matches the rx sensitivity well. Can you tell us more about what you need to accomplish for your clients from 12-15 miles out ? [partially so we can be more specific with our comments, partially just because we're geeks...] -- andyw at pobox.com Andy Warner Voice: (612) 801-8549 Fax: (208) 575-5634
