Chasing the Jackal

I can Skype.

I've actually waited about four months to say that! I finally got an antenna rig for the one ISP on Camp Victory, "Jackal", that allows you to use programs like Skype, BitTorrent, online gaming, and some other less savory yet high-demand online services. The one that I had been using, "Magic Island" or "MIT" (Magic Island Technologies), worked much like you might use a hotspot in a Starbucks - they have wireless access points all over the place, and if you are close enough to one, you connect, pay, and surf. The trouble is, MIT is in bed with the military, and it polices what you do on the network. In the case of the less savory things you can do online, it is to be expected, but they also cut off Skype, gaming, and other fairly benign things in the name of security and conservation of bandwidth. Despite this odious policy, since you don't need a crazy antenna to get their service, they get a lot of users who aren't willing to go on an epic quest to connect.

The antennas are available as they come into country, and you have to sign up with Jackal before they will order one. For $150 ($75 deposit, $75 for the antenna to keep as long as you need), you get on a waiting list that is at least a month long. When it comes in, you have to find some kind of mast, pole, or long piece of wood to mount it on, then set it up to point to one of several Jackal motherships. I was able to get one secondhand for $100 (but it's not eligible to be returned for its deposit ...), complete with a sturdy metal mast and a fairly long cable. I thought the guy who sold it to me lived only a couple housing units down from mine, so I asked my roommate Bob to pick it up for me on his day off - the guy selling it was trying to get out of Dodge quick (no pun intended - I live in a housing area called "Dodge City North"). It turned out he lived more like 20 housing units away. It'll take a few more weeks to live that one down.

Hopefully I can start getting into the weekly Skype routine everyone has been running for several months now!

Of course, pictures always help ... here are some of the install:

This is the antenna itself, known as a "Subscriber Unit" (it's WiMax technology). The guy who sold it to me gave me the metal pipe it is attached to as well.

We set it up to lean against the 12-foot concrete walls that surround our housing unit (bottom right). I used nylon cord to attach it to the concrete wall; there are a couple of rebar loops built into the wall to allow forklifts to manipulate it.

There wasn't much room between the wall and the housing unit for me, let alone the ladder ... oh well, war is hell.

Bob, watching me risk my life on the ladder from the ground, still not amused about having to carry the immense metal pole a quarter mile (or more)!

That's it! We ran the cord from the wall (in the background) to our window, and we got unrestricted Internet!