Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

[gwyn_carwardine]

Looked at Voda's Ts & Cs - not exactly clear - if you can find where they say you can't use your device in the air you're better at this than me ) In fact I'll even buy you a pint should we meet in real life. There a challenge! This is where I started https://www.vodafone.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/

Here:

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/cs/groups/configfiles/documents/contentdocuments/vfcon058470.pdf

Section 4.3 (b):

 (b) do anything that causes the Network to be impaired

Hmmm. That's so amorphous as to be meaningless. Without clear definitions of what you can and can't do they could probably only ever say in retrospect "please don't do something [specific] again". But so far I haven't been contacted - nor anyone I know...

Not sure that's pint-worthy but I like beer so the offer still stands, for effort  Not sure how you get to that document though..

[gwyn_carwardine]

Great work!

If you would be interested to put an app note together, we could put it on our pilotaware.com site ?

Thx
Lee

Hi Lee, I've created a document for you to review - I'll be happy once I've installed it all in the aircraft and demonstrated effectiveness so for now I've put a disclaimer on it!

I couldn't attach it here due to the 512KB limit so I've put it on my server:
http://propelsystems.com/private/dsl/Creating%20a%20cockpit%20network%20with%20Internet%20and%20PAW%20access%20v1.0.pdf

Welcome any comments either on here or to my personal email shown on the document footer

Well done Gwyn, persistence has its rewards.

I have just been watching on the sidelines as you are all working way above my networking knowledge level. My solution has been to leave my iPad mine WiFi'd to PAW and connect the pad by BT to my Galaxy S5 to allow SD etc to continue to get Internet updates in flight. Works great for me but lots of users have been unable to get the BT connection to work for some reason and mine is obviously a very basic setup compared to yours.

If you are able to put a  brief 'paper' (photos etc.) together, I for one would be very interested to read it and as Lee has suggested it would be a very useful addition to the information on the PilotAware website.

Regards and again well done!

Peter

Thanks Peter - perhaps have a read through and see if it makes sense to you.

[gwyn_carwardine]

Just inspected the dongle closer and found it accepts an external antenna. And I have one already (£20) so will try with this too

[gwyn_carwardine]

Went for a two hour circular flight this afternoon from Heathfield (East Sussex) to Rochester, along to Margate, touch-and-go at Manston and then back to Heathfield via Folkestone.

Had the dongle (on Vodafone) just loose in the cockpit for the first leg. For comparison we had a mobile phone (on O2, as that's all we had) in the cockpit. We noticed that the dongle had coverage almost all of the time as did the phone. They both dropped out briefly at similar points.

After stopping at Rochester I plugged in the external aerial and hung it in the cockpit. It didn't seem to make much difference but again we had connectivity almost the entire time with a couple of drop-outs.

I wonder if positioning the dongle / aerial at the bottom of the aircraft - so no aluminium in the way might make it even better. But for me - the fact that it was at least as good as the mobile phone - it's a success. And I shall now purchase a dedicated SIM. I did a speed test at one point when the dongle was showing 1 out of 4 bars of 4G signal  : ping 49mS, download 1.6Mbps, upload 23Mbps.

And the £45 Amazon fire tablet worked perfectly (although it's possibly not as bright as other tablets)

I'll update the document to include the details of the external aerial at some point.

[exfirepro]

Good work Gwyn! Always appreciative of anything that expands the usability of the system in an efficient and effective manner. Glad you are experiencing such positive results.

Regards

Peter