[Cu-wireless] A bit of confusion....

[Numbski]

I'm a member of the infant "Mile High Wireless" group in the Denver/Colorado Springs area.  I'm originally from St. Louis though (Collinsville, IL in fact...), and I have a bit of confusion that I need clarified:

I'm lost about how connections are made with long range antennae.  For argument's sake, a reasonably powered Omni-Directional antenna can provide a coverage area of 1 mile radius (I've seen schematics of a 10db gain omni, and I have no idea what kind of range that would provide).  Now, there's an access point hooked to that omni.  I have a directional antenna that can get me up to 25db gain.  I want to connect to that access point from several miles out, clearly out of the coverage area of that access point.  Clearly without question I can SEND radio signals TO the access point, but I won't be able to get anything back....correct?  Where I'm confused is that with all the wireless groups I've seen on the net, I see these multiple mile directional connections from access points, but I don't see how that's possible unless the access point has directionals pointing back at the users, and that would become very costly, very fast.

So which is it?

Please reply directly.  Thank you.

Numbski
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