Bob Cringely wanted to hook his home to the wireless network Sonic operates in downtown Santa Rosa, but Bennett Mountain stood in the way. Here’s how he did it:
A couple trips to Home Depot and about $100 later, I had in hand a pair of double-headed yagi passive repeating antennas tuned for 2.4 GHz. I built two repeaters thinking that, if I could even find a place to put them on top of Bennett Mountain, two repeaters might be better than one.
Now comes the absolute hardest part of this project, climbing Bennett Mountain with two double yagis, a notebook computer, and various implements for attaching the yagis to a tree and to each other. This is the sort of effort most geeks from the Jolt Cola and Three Musketeers school of computing should probably not try. The top of Bennett Mountain is 1.5 miles away, and 768 feet above my house and there is no way to drive any of it.
Ninety minutes later, I found the bronze marker left by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey crew in 1956 signifying the top of Bennett Mountain, but from that spot, I couldn’t see my house or downtown. That required climbing a large oak tree. Once up in the tree, a blue oak, the view was amazing! I could see the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles away, and to the south I could even see San Francisco Bay. Downtown and my house were both visible, too, so I mounted the first yagi and pointed each end in the appropriate direction.
That’s what we Bennetts call “intrepid.” If the mountain keeps you from Mohammed, Cringley lays out the details of his gear here. This was all on Slashdot.