Hastings Wireless Posts

Hastings Wireless: A Retrospective

In 2002 a friend and I attempted to start a wireless Internet service provider, called “Hastings Wireless” in our home town of Hastings, NE. Our objective was to blanket public spaces with WiFi which the public could use at some minimal cost. The project ran for about 1.5 years and collected a small, 5-person following, but didn’t achieve critical mass and ultimately closed on 2009-08-16.

Background

In the interest of preserving this (failed) activity, I’ve resurrected most of the content from our website and posted it to this blog with the original article publication date. You can find the content on the following pages:

Helical Antenna Construction

Basic Information

The Helical antenna is a simple way of obtaining high-gain and a broad band of frequency characteristics. A helical antenna radiates when the circumference of the helix is of the order of one wavelength and radiation along the axis of the helix is found to be the strongest. This antenna is mainly directional. The radiation from a Helical antenna is circularly polarized, that is to say that the Electromagnetic field rotates about the axis of the helix in the direction of the helix turn. Therefore, the radiation is either circularly polarized clockwise or counter-clockwise.