While not quite as secretive as the article makes it sound, I thought this was an interesting look at how a technology that is generally considered to be somewhat outdated (for internet backhaul, at least) can still be incredibly useful.
I put up a 50' tower to get non-sattelite internet at my house a couple years back and since then I've been interested in towers and the kinds of things you find at the top of them--generally antennas of some sort. It's neat to see all the microwave towers when you're driving out in the western US. You can tell they're microwave towers since they're real stout--not spindly like an AM or FM radio station tower or a steel monopole like your standard cell phone tower. They're usually painted red and white, too. They have to be stout because microwave dishes are huge and relatively sensitive to alignment; the wind blows around spindly towers more than you'd expect (and more than you'd like when you're standing at the top of one...).
Neat. Any chance it's going to be of use for data transmission in case of apocalypse, presuming that the Internet is unavailable? A post-apocalyptic story is brewing in my head where using the Internet has become dangerous, so I'm looking into alternative means of communication for the characters to rely on.
YES! In fact, right now there's a whole group of Ham Radio operators building a mesh computer network out of point-to-point links: http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/
Also take a look at APRS, the Automatic Packet Reporting System: http://aprs.org/ It is another ham project that lets people transmit data packets (usually location); some people have linked this network to the Internet (http://aprs.fi/) and to SMS.
There are a handful of packet radio modes, if you want to get into that level of detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio
Seems like any WRT would do considering some of their tutorials.
- Antennas
They can be made using barbecue grill if you need it cheap and can follow a fairly comprehensive guide.
Not to mention that you can make this using a Pringles can. How to guide.
EDIT: Oh, and a chemistry tip about removing rust from steel: just drop that shit inside a glassware that's big enough and fill with ~40% phosphoric acid. Works better on carbon-rich steel, but any type can be cleaned when soaked for long enough.
EDIT2: I had to remove rust from one thing recently and made an experiment that's quite relevant. After applying heat to the object that had to be cleaned the rust almost slithered off of it in a way similar to cheap paint when treated with acetone. Phosphoric acid works, even without extra heat, but the result was significantly better and done much more quickly then without heating the object up.
Oh, I reckon most use of ham radio is voice. For local communications, generally people use handheld UHF or VHF radios and a repeater that rebroadcasts transmissions 1 2.
For long distance communications, most people use HF radios, which transmit in frequencies that can be bounced off the sky and ground! 1 2 HF equipment is usually pricier than VHF/UHF stuff, but that's probably partly because it draws the interest of more serious nerds.
A couple CB bands overlap the ham HF range and, given the right atmospheric conditions, can be used for long-distance communication, called shooting skip.
Of course, you can also use the oldest radio mode out there: morse.
Unfortunately, microwave links are affected by rain and clouds (water is a great absorber of RF energy), and the higher the frequency (and thus the higher the bandwidth), the worse rain fade gets. Your standard internet user cares way more about speed (and thus bandwidth) than they do about latency, so microwave isn't a great fit for their needs.
This is why we've been deprecating microwave for fiber links in general--it's a lot cheaper to set up a few towers and antennas than it is to dig really long trenches to lay fiber in.
I live out in the woods, so my situation is a little different than most. For residential use, it's probably cheaper and faster to just get cable or something. Also, the up front cost is pretty high, especially if you're putting in a tower to get LOS.
That said, a couple of friends of mine in Seattle are setting up a microwave link from a datacenter to their house.