Taking a laptop / RB out of the home....how does it work?

[Tramline]

O.k, first let me apologise for another basic question, but its one thats been praying on my mind.

I have a wireless enabled laptop.  I use a relatively small ISP - Eclipse and my RB works very well within the confines of the house, but if I was to take the laptop/radar to the US or even 2 miles away at LHR - how does the system work - i.e will it pick up another ISP broadband and work as if I'm at home or am I being very simplistic and needing something to enable me to get broadband 'in the field'?

Thankyou for your patience everyone.

[besty]

I think you would really need a mobile phone dongle with pay as you go facilities. I know both o2 and tmobile do pay as you go options for mobile broadband.

Hope that helps a little

Stuart

[Keith L]

I'm not sure if your question is about RB or about mobile broadband.  You do not need a broadband connection to use RB away from home but, obviously, you will only see live data.

[Tramline]

Thanks Stuart and Keith.  I suppose my question was 'do I need an internet connection for the RB to work 'away from home'?

Seems what Keith is saying is that it will work and I will get live data simply from having the RB program running with radar connected and I don't need an internet/broadband connection . 

So is the internet connection really just for the 'Network' side then?

[viking9]

So is the internet connection really just for the 'Network' side then?

No, it is used to update aircraft details and photos.

Tom

[Tramline]

So is the internet connection really just for the 'Network' side then?

No, it is used to update aircraft details and photos.

Tom

Thanks for coming back Tom, I'll just have to try it out and see how it works out.

Funny, all along I thought that the internet was needed to make the program run and display the a/c info on the screen/map!

[ACW367]

Thanks for coming back Tom, I'll just have to try it out and see how it works out.

Tramline

Basically when mobile and not in a wireless hotspot or with a wireless internet dongle.  You will see all tracks of aircraft on your screen as normal.  You will not get any network traffic.  For aircraft you have recorded before, you will have data in the Navdata file and photos stored on your harddrive. This will be displayed just as you have at home.

For new aircraft that you have not previously seen, the box will not be able to connect to the internet to get the details. Therefore the aircraft will show on the screen with just the mode S hex and the '...' aircraft type.  It will show the same on your my log.  No details for that hex will be added to your navdata. 

Once you are back connected to the internet, you will be able to do a populate on the mylog to get the aircraft details/photos.  You will have to manually insert the hex codes and associated data into your database explorer to populate Navdata.

[Tramline]

Thanks for coming back Tom, I'll just have to try it out and see how it works out.

Tramline

Basically when mobile and not in a wireless hotspot or with a wireless internet dongle.  You will see all tracks of aircraft on your screen as normal.  You will not get any network traffic.  For aircraft you have recorded before, you will have data in the Navdata file and photos stored on your harddrive. This will be displayed just as you have at home.

For new aircraft that you have not previously seen, the box will not be able to connect to the internet to get the details. Therefore the aircraft will show on the screen with just the mode S hex and the '...' aircraft type.  It will show the same on your my log.  No details for that hex will be added to your navdata. 

Once you are back connected to the internet, you will be able to do a populate on the mylog to get the aircraft details/photos.  You will have to manually insert the hex codes and associated data into your database explorer to populate Navdata.

Thanks for the clear explanation ACW367, much appreciated.

[DaveReid]

Basically when mobile and not in a wireless hotspot or with a wireless internet dongle.  You will see all tracks of aircraft on your screen as normal.  You will not get any network traffic.  For aircraft you have recorded before, you will have data in the Navdata file and photos stored on your harddrive. This will be displayed just as you have at home.

Before investing in mobile WiFi, it's worth checking if your mobile phone can be used as a modem for your PC - if so, that could turn out to be the cheapest form of Internet access, although it won't be particularly fast.

[Allocator]

A mobile phone data connection can also work out to be VERY expensive too - so read the small print!

I use Orange Internet Everywhere at GBP 15 for 3Gb per month.  The only snag is that it doesn't work everywhere and often the connection speed is slow.  But when it does work, it works very well with RadarBox out in the "field"

[Johnn]

When you are out and about with your radar boxes , do you reset the polar diagram?
Thanks John

[jgrloit]

I have the Vodaphone version of the dongle, with the same 3Gb monthly limiy.

Found that it works very well - ran the whole system true mobile on the 19th from Murcar ( EGPD) back to home outputting the seen traffic to the Network ALL the way.
Was NOT monitoring the screen .....   Ran the whole system through a Laptop power supply 19v from the cigarette lighter socket (Maplin)... 
Had range as far south as Liverpool.