Hello to all 6M grid chasers and VHFers....
As you may know, the K5N Grid Activation Group is going to make one more
try at DL88 this summer at the end of June. We really want to have
Internet down there, so we have been researching(once again) various
possible ways to achieve that. The only method that we have found so
far, is called BGAN. A BGAN terminal is basically a satellite modem for
Internet.....you also can have normal phone too.
There are only a few BGAN firms that will rent us a BGAN terminal for a
week or two(they like 1 year contracts). After you get the BGAN
terminal, then you have to pay for the dreaded "Data Plan". We have
found a firm that will rent us the terminal for two weeks for $90 and
will sell us IP data. They have two plans that seem like they might
work for us: 1)25MB for $249 and 2)50MB for $399. Obviously, both of
those are pretty limited and pretty expensive. However, we could talk
to the world and let people know what we were doing, etc.
My QUESTION is this: Does anyone know any better way to get Internet in
DL88 other than BGAN? Does anyone have an "IN" to the BGAN world so
that we can get a terminal for a couple of weeks(7 days is all we really
need) and hopefully, pay a bit less for the data??
Clearly, if we do this, we will not be able to sit on PingJockey and BS
with the world. PingJockey is a very "busy" web page and thousands of
KB of data flows every few minutes that you watch PingJockey. We are
considering using the Packet Cluster via Telnet. We can filter the
posts that come to us so that only posts containing "K5N" would be
transmitted. This will cut the IP traffic to the bare minimum. In
addition, we avoid the overhead of web pages or email. This seems to be
a simple approach that minimizes the IP traffic--a MAJOR big deal here.
People would still be able to post small messages to us(almost like
PingJockey) and we would be able to talk back, if we wished to do so.
I don't know how to use the Packet Cluster yet, but I suppose that I
will have to learn. We simply cannot use any method that passes
hundreds of megabytes of data a day--unless someone can get us a free
account--all donations gratefully accepted.....HI. Your comments and /
or ideas here. Does this look like a reasonable approach? Even with
rigid controls on how much data we use, this will probably cost about
$500 after all is over, so if someone knows of a better way, now is the
time.....Please contact me directly off the reflector. Thank you very
much....
73 Marshall K5QE
Member K5N Grid Activation Group
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