Yes, as ManofMeans said, I run a small wi-fi network from my home. I first started when I was the only person in the area to be able to get ADSL broadband. Instead of being selfish, I decided to share my broadband with residents in the area that were told they could not have it.
I was part of a club, but decided to go it alone when I understood enough about it.
At the peak when I started, I had 17 residents connecting to my 500kbps line. But hay, it was still better than dial up.
Now BT have managed to get ADSL broadband to all residents and I can get up to 2mb on a good day with a MAX service. My customers have dropped off to just 3 now. The main issue was I was very strict with what went through my network and had to threaten a few residents for misuse and P2P file sharing. Something that really used up the available bandwidth. It was a community thing and users had to realise that their what they did affected everybody. Since many wanted to use P2P, when broadband became available to them, they dropped my wireless service.
In the early days, I had no issues with going wireless. But, now so many ISPs give away wireless routers, I am competing with 20+ wireless signals. With just 13 channels to use in this county, finding an area on the spectrum is a real issue for me now. I've thought about giving it up a number of times. I suspect that many of these wireless routers are turned on by default but never used. Many are unsecure. Something I whole heartedly blame ISPs for.
Only today, I've had to fit a good directional antenna to 1 of my users just 3 houses away. Still not sure if it has fixed the issue for her.
What I am finding now, is that for less well off residents in a low income bracket (a lot of single mums where I live) can't afford a mobile phone as well as a BT phone. So, by ditching the BT phoine, they find they are unable to get broadband by any other means.
If you are just trying to connect to 1 user, then 2 directional antennas is your answer. But, if you want to use a laptop or PDA and connect anywhere in the area (nothing like surfing in the garden on the lappy), I sugest an omni-directional at the access point and have directional antennas pointing at it.
Make sure you keep your antenna as high as possible and free from obsticles. Roof tiles can deflect signals and avoid placing it next to a TV ariel. That creates splatter. Keep the antenna cable as short as possible for as little loss as possible.
Here is a piccy of my antenna. It's connected to a Netgear 834G V2 router which I have 2. I try to keep 2 of everything so I have a back-up to keep the service going if something breaks down. I have found the older V2 router better than later versions for connecting wirelessly and if I get a power cut, these routers just reconnect on their own when power is restored. The GT model and newer V3 G doesn't seem to want to do this.
Let us know how you get on m8.