WiFi evangelists. Is that what we are? hmmmm It seems so. We're still in Quartzsite because we so enjoy the site where we're staying thanx to the hospitality of Frankie and Dick. And, we're still waiting for another RV part to arrive and get installed .... no hurry.

We try to give back with some computer support. Carol suggested that we might even want to offer computer classes. A little late for this season, but if we return to Quartzsite next year, we may try to set up classes in a community center or something. Meanwhile, I said, lets try one. You can be my guinea pigs. I figured I might give them a 'Using Windows XP' class, or a 'Sharing Digital Photos on the Web' or 'Safe Computing' or even Word, Excel or Powerpoint. But, what did I end up with? 'Using WiFi' My students were Frankie and Carol. Frankie has already been using WiFi provided by our Satellite dish, and Carol didn't have the equipment to use it, but that's the class I wanted to give, so I did.

Well, Frankie was just a sponge wanting to understand all about this WiFi stuff that she has been using. And, Carol let me install an adapter on her computer and she was like a kid in a candy store exclaiming about how much faster this was than using her cell phone to connect to the Internet! I really had fun. They both ended up spending lots of time on www.jiwire.com looking for hotspots in all the other places they plan to stay throughout the year. Would you believe there's even a free hotspot in Mammoth Lakes! That's a little town way up in the mountains where Frankie will be this summer.

Carol asked, if she would be able to use the WiFi back at her RV which is halfway down the block from ours. I said I wasn't sure, but let's try and see. It worked great. I'm a little surprised because we don't have any amplification on our system. The Access Point is inside our RV. And Carol's RV is about 400 feet away. The couple across the street also has a WiFi-enabled computer and have logged onto our system. Whaddaya know? We have a neighborhood hotspot. All from our mighty Motosat / Datastorm satellite dish.

There's also a commercial WiFi hotspot here called RVLogon, but from where we are you need a powerful external antenna to be able to connect to it. We are able to connect to them with the antenna on the right in the photo above - but that's not something that everyone wants to buy.

We're not the only Datastorm user providing a WiFi hotspot for neighbors. Check out Joline's weblog. She's on a caravan in Mexico and, with her Datastorm she is providing WiFi Internet access to anyone in the group who wants it. She's even enlisted some of them to be 'reporters' on her Blog. I can't wait till we go there. Thanx for the preview Joline! And, I understand that Gypsy John plans to do the same thing on his Alaska trip this summer. I'll be watching.