I got the main info for this antenna design from
Rob Flickenger's page
on how to make a high-gain directional antenna with 6 dollars worth of parts.
I basically followed his design and don't even know enough about antenna design
to make any modifications.
I hope my photos and notes are helpful to others who are trying to do the same thing.
There are also some other good pictures at Sameer Verma's site.
I took some photos while we (sons Stephen & Jerry Jr. and I) were putting it together.
I hope to get them a little better organized and get some accompanying text in here over the next day or two.
The pictures are numbered in order of being taken and the names of the picture are fairly self-explanatory.
The amazing thing is that it works. I measured up to a 12db gain using my Orinoco (Lucent) Wavelan card as compared to just using the antenna that's on the card. I want to do some more testing but it definitely makes a difference. I used Net Stumbler to give my my SNR (Signal/Noise Ratio) numbers because it's easiest for me. Using that, I can see that the signal is strongest out the 'horn' of the antenna (end you get the chips out of) and weakest when pointed the opposite direction. The 'plain' antenna in my laptop has a similar pattern - the signal is strongest when the end of the card is pointed toward the antenna.
Here are a couple more links:
Cantenna how to
Homebrew Antenna Shootout
125 mile wireless link
Cookie cantenna, funnel cone addon