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Old March 25th 05, 11:10 PM
nana
 
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You can make a "passive repeater". This requires 2 directional antennas.
At the top of the hill, hook up both antennas (to each other) and aim one

at
"the world" or the repeater
and aim the other at your house. run a cable between them.

When they built the Georgia Railroad Bank Bldg in Augusta (years ago) the
phone company had to install a passive repeater on it because the
building
interrupted line-of-sight for a microwave shot.

I've never tried this myself, but I've heard that the technique is very
useful in mountain terrain.


Passive repeaters are used at microwave frequencies all over the Snowy
Mountains in Australia. They are the size of drive-in theatre screens with
tilt adjustments.

Remember, when the signal is retransmitted there is an additional path loss
of something like 130dB. The signal being received by the repeater antenna
must be very strong or the transmit antenna will only have a few nanowatts
to deal with.

You would be advised to do a few path loss calculations before putting in a
lot of effort which may be wasted. The exercise is well worth it as the
process is very educational. You will need to know either the available
signal strength from the distant repeater at your proposed site, or it's ERP
and distance. Also, your distance and ERP up to the remote site. Then you
have a few figures to begin working with.

Or you could try hiding a small dualband HT in crossband mode with a small
solar panel on a hilltop and working through it.

Nana