Hi

I am trying to branch out wirelessly from my house in Karori, Wellington, but being cursed by the hills I am considering maybe building a repeater to stick somewhere high that me (and others) can use to bounce off to get out of the valley.

Does anyone have any experience with building a repeater station?
I have some design considerations like:[list] What would be better out of just an access point (or maybe 2) or a PC-based solution?
[*] Should I use a waveguide antenna and a parabolic dish to beam the signal away or just a single waveguide to allow a distant node to link us out?
[*] What are the chances I could get away with hiding something like this up on a hill somewhere and not get in trouble/have it smashed to bits? Or anyone know what the application protocol is to put something like this somewhere?[list]

Now another consideration is that I'm planning on making it solar-powered. I can get BP solar panels through work (DSE) in various wattages, and coupled with a car battery I'm hoping I can run this thing 24/7. I was thinking maybe a 50-watt-peak (@12v) panel would be sufficient if I was running just an access point (which draw ~1A peak @ 5v from some light research I've done). The other solution is an Epia 500ish system with PCI wlan cards (could use Epia double-PCI risers if more cards are needed) and run it off a DC-DC power supply which I'm more than familiar with from my Epia in my car... I think that'd need quite a bit more power, so I'd be getting a bigger panel....

At this stage, just some advice would be nice. All comments welcome