setting up airport

[Mike Arrigo]

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if someone can tell me what I am  
missinghere. I don't have a wireless network here at home, but was  
playing with the network configuration to try to figure out how to  
enable the airport feature, since their may come a time when I take my  
mac mini to a place that uses wireless networking. I realize I don't  
have a network to connect to, but I could not even get the airport  
feature to enable. In network preferences, I chose to add a service,  
and selected airport. An option became available to turn on airport,  
so I selected that but it had no effect. Do I actually need to use the  
assistant and enter the name of a wireless network before airport will  
enable? Also, do I need to use the airport utility application, or is  
all of this done in network preferences?