So how does the Cantenna work? The Waveguide antenna is a relatively simple principle. I liked the design and decided to try my hand a building a 2.4 GHz Waveguide Cantenna Antenna. I’ve seen other cantennas made out soup cans, coffee cans, and other types of recycled materials but things didn’t come together until I found a blog post by Mike of Mike’s Tech Blog on building a cantenna out of 4 inch diameter aluminum dryer vent pipe. Well, those antennas really didn’t work, the diameter of the tube was too small for 2.4 Ghz and the foil lining didn’t make the best reflector. You may remember the Pringles 802.11b Cantenna from years back. My Waveguide Cantenna antenna is the answer. With that, I’ve been researching antenna designs looking for something inexpensive and easy to build, so that mesh stations can get on the air with a minimum investment. Like APRS I see the potential for emergency communications that broad-band hamnet provides and know it takes one or two stations to get on the air to create the excitement necessary to build out our network. I like being on the bleeding edge of technology, back in 2000 mine was the second APRS station to go on the air in our community.
I proceeded to get a few more hams interested in the concept, one thing led to another, and this spring we have our first node on the air with the goal of a citywide ham radio mesh network. I thought to myself: this could be the answer to networking our Field Day site. One segment showed hams deploying a mesh network at the Dayton Hamvention. So what got my attention of broadband-hamnet was a video produced by the ARRL called the DIY of Ham Radio. That means amateur radio operators may modify the routers with custom firmware, add high gain antennas, and otherwise experiment to squeeze more range and capabilities out of off the shelf wireless networking equipment. What makes the mesh attractive to ham radio operators and emergency communicators is that the first six channels of the 802.11b/g protocol fall within the 2.4 GHz amateur radio band.
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