Three college students and amateur ham radio operators will have an impressive story about their vacations to tell engineering classmates this fall. The recent graduates of St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati were the winners of the DefCon Wi-Fi Shootout 2004 at the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas last month. With a verified distance of 55.1 miles, Team P.A.D. achieved the world record for unamplified Wi-Fi connection.

The goal of the second annual contest, held in conjunction with the DefCon hackers conference, is to discover who can achieve the greatest connected wireless network distance between two computers using the 802.11b Wi-Fi protocol. Six teams entered this year.

For the record-setting distance, the team used two consumer-grade Proxim 32-milliwatt Orinoco Gold USB Wi-Fi adapters mounted on the feed points of two surplus nine-and-a-half foot satellite dishes, without the use of external amplification.

“We were planning on building a wireless connection between [the houses of] three guys in our radio club. We all live about 20 miles apart,” said team member and St. Louis University freshman Ben Corrado. “But we never got the towers set up high enough in our back yards that we could actually shoot over the hills in Cincinnati, so we had this equipment laying around.”

The team found out about the contest and decided to enter. With one of their fathers as a chaperone, the guys packed up a trailer and an Astrovan and embarked on the 30-hour drive to Vegas. A fourth member couldn't go because of a pre-scheduled family vacation.

The windy, 109-degree conditions in the desert proved tough but didn't deter them.

“It was quite a sight to behold, those guys building that thing on the side of the mountain,” said Dave Moore, contest founder and organizer. “They'd rigged up this system of hydraulics and levers and pulleys to where they could aim that dish from the ground. So they could steer it around without having to climb up there next to it. It was really cool.”

For their efforts, the team won a total of $1500 in prize money for first place in three categories — homemade amplified, unamplified and longest distance. Moore is helping them verify their accomplishment with Guinness World Records.

“They felt like they could have gone even farther, but the way the terrain is laid out there in the desert they just ran out of places to go, basically, and still have line of sight back to the base camp area,” Moore said.

There's always next summer. The team plans to return to try to beat its own record.