How To Make: CHEAP Homemade Parabolic Reflector Antenna

[-=Xploitz=-]

http://www.freeantennas.com

Heres the template.....



It's Radiation pattern.....

The final product.....












This is a simple and cheap way to blow away the pringlels cantenna. With this EZ Homemade parabolic reflector,you get true "backfire" which will damn near double or triple the range of your wireless network. And, if you didnt know ...true "backfire" from the parabolic antenna will also allow you to inject successfully over greater distances. So basically...if you can pick up your own AP ...you can inject to it as long as the power level is no less that 10.

With this very cheaply made homemade antenna, I have picked up my own AP from almost 1/4 mile away, and successfully injected to it and cracked my own WEP security.

All you need is a piece of metal or foil..yes even a piece of cardboard with foil wrapped around it will work. This is GREAT for omni directional antennas! This is what I use on my Airlink101 AWC4130 which I soldered an external SMA connector to and then put an Airlink101 +10Db high gain OMNI directional at the other end...I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS FOR ANY AMATURE PEN TESTER.

Enjoy..and if you have any questions..feel free to ask me.

BTW there are several versions and pics in this link as well as variations and the "corner panel" antenna. Make sure you look at all the links and follow all the directions precisely!

[Baxter]

Hey,
i made a reflector once and worked good. i still have it somewhere. still packed from the move to my new house.
A friend of mine makes antenna's.
I'll get some pic for you if your interested in seeing them.

[-=Xploitz=-]

Originally Posted by Baxter

Hey,
i made a reflector once and worked good. i still have it somewhere. still packed from the move to my new house.
A friend of mine makes antenna's.
I'll get some pic for you if your interested in seeing them.

Definitely Baxter. You know me.

[g4hsean]

Wow nice use of Physics :P really looks good, Gj i might just try this out

[-=Xploitz=-]

Originally Posted by g4hsean

Wow nice use of Physics :P really looks good, Gj i might just try this out

You wont be sorry...just remember...even though it uses an omni..the parabolic "dish" makes it a SEMI-directional...and very focused. True TX and RX power.

[-~operator~-]

This is sweet! I will try this with my two AP's located here, one is set up as a repeater, has to connect between two floors and has 40% of power (according to my AP). Will post my experiences...

Thanks xploitz!

[-=Xploitz=-]

Originally Posted by -~operator~-

This is sweet! I will try this with my two AP's located here, one is set up as a repeater, has to connect between two floors and has 40% of power (according to my AP). Will post my experiences...

Thanks xploitz!

Did you get a chance to "build" this and test it out?? Please post any negative or positive results you got. Your feedback is much anticipated.

[Raven]

Well I had a few spare minutes today so I had a shot at building one of these onto my Edmax EW7318USg card using the bundled 4dB antenna. It's very easy to make, I just used the standard template off their site and printed it without resizing. After assembling it and sticking some foil to the back, I gave it a test. I put about 50m and several walls and floors between me and the AP. By placing the reflector on the antenna I gained about 20% 'Link Quality' and 30% 'Signal Strength'. The actual speed of the connection tripled from 12Mbps to 36Mbps. For 5 minutes cutting and sticking that's not a bad increase, I plan to pick up a bigger antenna and make a larger reflector and see if I can get a similar improvement again.

[-=Xploitz=-]

Originally Posted by Raven

Well I had a few spare minutes today so I had a shot at building one of these onto my Edmax EW7318USg card using the bundled 4dB antenna. It's very easy to make, I just used the standard template off their site and printed it without resizing. After assembling it and sticking some foil to the back, I gave it a test. I put about 50m and several walls and floors between me and the AP. By placing the reflector on the antenna I gained about 20% 'Link Quality' and 30% 'Signal Strength'. The actual speed of the connection tripled from 12Mbps to 36Mbps. For 5 minutes cutting and sticking that's not a bad increase, I plan to pick up a bigger antenna and make a larger reflector and see if I can get a similar improvement again.

Thanks for taking time out Raven and posting your results. If you did that in 5 minutes..just imagine your results if you took time to build a "quality" product! Keep experimenting...and you'll get much better results I promise.

[-~operator~-]

ok, here's the setup:
I have 2 AP's, my router on the ground floor and a repeater on the 2nd. I sit in the same room as the repeater, with my laptop approx. 5 metres away. I had to do this because the ISP connection is on the ground floor. So the 2 APs have a bridge across 2 floors, one with floor heating (i think this will also reduce signal strength with the metal in the floor).

So i got me some paper and scissors . First thing i tried is to use it with my external 5db Antenna, pointing it directly to the repeater. I had an SNR increase from approx. -90 to a maximum of -70. But this was not very significant, because i reached -70 even without the reflector. I thought it could be because the reflector does not cover the whole antenna. i will build a bigger one and try again, perhaps i can manage to get a straight connection to the router on the ground floor.

So i thought, why not use it between router and repeater. at the router web config, i can see the signal strength of the repeater. until now i had a connection speed of approx. 20 MBit, signal strength kept jumping from 18-25%. Put the reflector on: Voila! strength 65%, constant 54MBit. It also pays out to play a bit with the reflector direction.

Veeeeeery nice! and this made by... nothing! a little paper, some tin foil and a bit of time! this is so cool, thanks for the link!