Last summer, I took a Cessna 150 from Phoenix to OSH, then on to the
east coast, and then home to Phoenix. I used my WiFi Pocket PC PDA, an
ipaq 5550, during my trip to get weather data and to upload photos and
a diary to a little web site "blog" for family and friends at home. I
spent a good bit of time sniffing around for an open wifi hotspot while
I was at OSH, but I never found one.

There were several wireless networks in each of the large conference
halls, but they all required authentication. I asked around at a few
of the booths that featured wifi enabled products and I got the
impression that wireless net access was an expensive add-on to the cost
of renting the trade show booth. I cynically surmised that protecting
that revenue stream was the reason for not providing public access.

There is, as someone mentioned, a member pavilion where you may wait in
line to use a personal computer for a period of time. I asked the
hostess there about wifi and she didn't really seem to understand what
I meant.

I figured at the time that I could take a walk around the perimeter
road of the North Forty and probably find something coming out of a
residence, but I never tried. The same trick did work earlier in the
week in Manhattan, Kansas when I was able to find a hotspot to send an
email by slowly cruising through a residential neighborhood in a
courtesy car until the green light on my PDA came on.

I've heard that at some gatherings of R. V. enthusiasts the hams in the
crowd will get together and put up some sort of wireless net. I
naively figured that the same would certainly be true in the North
Forty at Oshkosh. I would bet that Oshkosh during that week is pretty
cooking with RF activity. I saw some CAP kids cruising around in a
golf cart with radio sniffing equipment. I presume they were looking
for ELTs and I'll bet they found a few! I also saw an SBC
Communications van covered in antennas driving around slowly with the
passenger staring at a computer monitor. I waved them down and asked
about wifi but the dude just scoffed at me and said no way. Saw a
similar van at the Reno air races in September. Any idea what they're
up to?

-R