harvSki:
eh? not sure I understand what you are talking about

btw FCC allows you much more power than the European equivalent ETSI (100mw) and no exceptions like point 2 point links

mrbueno:
Mr Powell can drop by anytime. I'll tell him, "Thanks for the spectrum! I wish you were still in charge."

aSic:
I am! (Under Part 97 rules.)

This is an interesting question. Its doubtful anyone from teh big bad effseesee will drop by to inspect you if you arent.. but still. How many folks are actually using matched and part15 certified antennas with their equipment? How many folks are staying within EIRP limits? Interesting questions indeed.

cmaenginsb:
From my exeriences I'd bet maybe 20-30% are 100% legal with about 70% being legal WRT power but not antenna combinations.

I don't think anyone here would actually confirm or deny it though.

Personally while they have relaxed them I bit, I do not understand the antenna requirement. If you use a professionally designed antenna (not a cantenna) what's the big deal as long as you stay inside of the power limits?

As to enforcement the FCC doesn't have the time except for 2 things:

a. You interfere with a licensed user, and their are licensed users of parts of the 2.4 band.

b. You're colocated on a site and the FCC investigates one of the other tennants. The see your handsome 1 watt amp on your omni and decide to check you out.

As to Part97, that's a whole nother ball of wax. Asic I'm sure you don't get any personal gain from your use of the equipment right? I've also not actually had it clarified to me that you can take a piece of equipment certified under Part-15 and operate it under Part-97, I understand that a lot of people are doing this but I still haven't had things clarified for me.

gmcintire:
Yes, you can take any equipment, regardless of how it was originally certified and operate it under Part97 providing you follow the guidelines for Part97 in return. For instance: you cannot run a business (or profit in any way) from it, all communications must be either unencrypted or easily decrypted (WEP key in SSID?), and you must identify yourself by your call sign at the beginning, end, and every 10 minutes in a communication.

Quite a bit of that is pretty "fuzzy" as to what is 100% legal however. The FCC wording says you can't "obstruct the meaning of the communication." You also must obviously follow the frequency allocations for Part97. The bonus to that of course is that under Part97, you have precedence over every Part15 device.

davidg:
sure, all our WISP sites are on geographic PCS licenses. we could pump 500 watts if we wanted. but we put them in to make the license "legally" on the air adn never sell service on them. we then sell the license to Verizon or Cingular and abandon the equipment as it is not worth retrieving unless we have another site lined up for it. sad thing is, each site costs about 60k but by the time teh license sells, the equipment is not worth much more than 8k. and it would cost that much to go all the way back to colorado or utah to pick it up. we pulled in all the AR sites when they sold, since they were only 5 or 6 hours away at most, but the rest were just abandoned.

aeronet:
Operators runnig wisp-specific gear like Trango, Canopy , ect should be 100% legal.... thats if the dont have a rf tinker on staff that likes to mod units....

davidg:
our stuff is Airspan. we had one link in Peublo that worked at 15 miles! it is line of sight, but still it was 15 miles on an omni antenna on the tower to a panel antenna on a pipe 8 ft off the ground. of course, the omni was 500 ft up, fed by 1 5/8 line and we were pumping 5 watts in at the bottom.

we are even thinking of putting one of these units on the air at our shop, just so a couple of us can get high speed at home.

Radialink:
This is a concern both in Canada and the US. Tranzeo opened their own lab just to expedite their certification process.

We can push FCC/IC for allowing many such small labs to quickly and inexpensively certify "outdoor assemblies" that already has a FCC listed radio.

We should also push vendors to specify "max dBi gain for PtP" and "max dBi gain for PtMP" rather than listing a bunch of costly antennas.

cmaenginsb:
Here are a few non-legal things you can do with Trango or Canopy that won't void the warranty but aren't legal:

1. Bigger dishes, since Trango uses standard DSS dishes you can simply connect the radio to a larger diameter dish and have a higher gain antenna. I'm not sure if this is legal or not considering the dish is just a passive reflector.

2. With Canopy the antenna portion is the same on the 5.3 model as on the 5.7 so you can use it with their standard dish or an even larger dish, however this will violate EIRP for that band.

So even systems that you would think are hard to break the rules with aren't.

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