This is the best I can find on how the offshore tower gets it’s high speed internet, from their facebook page:
“Math nerds & engineers... grab your propeller hat and sit a spell as we explain how we aligned the microwave dish on a large steel box where a compass needle swings more than a politician in a hotly contested race...
To point the Explore.org 4’ microwave dish at another 4’ dish 56 miles away that we can’t see and since even the best compasses ($300 dollar one!) swings back and forth 15° depending on the where you stand on the helipad, we used the only thing we could see and that was at night, the Oak Island Lighthouse. According to Google maps the light house on shore is exactly at 318.2° so to point at the TV tower dish at 1320’ and 322°, a little trigonometry was required. Thank you high school math teachers everywhere!
Then, using two equidistant strings to keep the dish back plane perpendicular and pointing to the calculated location on the helipad, gave us a solid high speed connection on the first try!”
I’m impressed. It was the standard that 4 W ERP was the max. Now, that is designed to reduce in town interference. Neither the Island nor I have that issue. smile.
Mine is within the power limit. Primarily because I used the old router I had. And only a 6db collinear antenna. Now there is an issue of bidirectional power. Some WIFI receivers vary a lot on sensitivity. I think both of mine have Orinoco cards. At the time they were pretty good. With higher gain on the feedhorn antenna at the laptop, it balanced pretty well.
I hope to pick up an large dish antenna. Have my eye on some, not yet ready to make an offer on them. Have a friend in OK who had a 28 ft. dish in his front yard. He was avid EME type. I did some of his tower work when I lived there. Saved some very big antennas for him when the wind blew over the christmas tree on top his tower. He and I did it and did not damage a single antenna. I did the tower work he was the ground crew. Not sure now if he had other help, that was a long time ago.