Finally! - In the water and moving

[Beta Don]

I bought this and put it up on the mast with a 2' fiberglass marine antenna on top of it

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Alfa-Tube-U-N-8 ... ITGH6dl34w

The WiFi transponder is inside it, so there is no signal loss in the cable leading to your computer and it has 10X the power of the transponder in a laptop

You plug it into your laptop (which powers it) and you'll see WiFi everywhere - Range is a couple miles. Most of the ones you see will be password protected, but you can then use any which aren't, or any you have the password for of course - Marinas restaurants, bars, motels, Lowes etc. It wasn't at all unusual for the Alfa Tube to show 25 or 30 'stations' within range and there were usually 2 or 3 which were open for use

When we were in Apalach, a live aboard in the marina had a dish antenna atop his Alfa Tube and he was getting reliable open WiFi from waaaaay across town - 2 or 3 miles, I think. We got that same channel too, but not with the reliability that he had

Now, if you want to use WiFi with your cel phones and tablets aboard, it gets a bit more . . . . . complicated. You'll need a router (about $50) and that powers your Alfa Tube, but you still have to initialize the system using a laptop, which is kinda a pain, but once you set it up and running, it's very handy. You can password protect YOUR router . . . . or you can leave it open and boats within a few hundred yards of you can get on YOUR system and have free WiFi too. If you're in a marina with spotty service or if you're anchored out somewhere for a few days, it's really worth the trouble to initialize the system with the router so that all your phones, tablets and computers have WiFi anytime you're near the boat

As with all devices which depend on signals, the better the antenna, the farther you are from obstructions and the higher you have it mounted, the better. We saw similar set-ups to ours on many other cruising boats so it muct be a pretty popular option

Don

[rnummi]

Thanks that's exactly what I was looking for... I'm going to also have "wired" put in. Just realized I had a cable at the post in my slip... then... looked over the starboard side and saw the metal cap covering the cable input.... doh. Turns out it's relatively cheap. I'm going to go your route on the wifi antenna.