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Cell Phone Accessory Remote Antennas?

Anybody have any comments or experience with cell phone remote antennas of the sort manufactured by Wilson Electronics:

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This year my son's dorm building is in a marginal cell phone signal strength location. I was wondering if the 10db gain promised by Wilson's "Trucker" antennas could help, particularly if the antenna is mounted on an outside window sill.

I kjnow there are active bi directional cell phone boosters on the market, but for their price I could get the kid a landline for the year.

Thanks guys,

Jeff

--
Jeff Wisnia    (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can smile when things are going wrong, you've thought of someone
to blame it on."
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Jeff Wisnia
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I had one and it worked wonders. Inside my rented duplex, there was no service available at all. Outside, if you stood in the right spot you were marginally OK... otherwise... no go! After adding one of these remote antennas midway up the roof and running the cable into the duplex, I always had a good, solid signal.

I can see that if you're on the 'wrong' side of the cell tower (i.e., the dorm building is shadowing the cell tower's signal), it might not help as much as in my case, but I imagine it'd still be a decent improvement. Perhaps you can find one of the antennas at a store that allows returns? Oftentimes truck stops (including the more generic 'travel' stops such as Pilot) stock these.

BTW, the '10dB gain' is a somewhat bogus number -- it's 10dB above _something_, but not 10dB above the antenna already in the phone. There was a discussion in the antennas group about this not too long ago.

---Joel Kolstad

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

I too was very skeptical of the advertised performance of the Wilson RV(trucker) cellular antenna. After reading the reviews here and other places on the internet I decided to give it a try. I live in West Virginia and because of the terrain cellular has never been that great and add to the fact the we have gone mostly digital now it has added to the problem.

I live in a rather remote area and don't have(or want) a hard line at home, I get a (no bars)signal at the house but it was unusable to make a phone call. I found the Wilson antenna at a local truck stop for $59.95 but had to order the adapter for the phone(LG4400) I mounted it on the roof with the provide cable length and low and be hold I went from no bars to 3 sometimes 4 bars! The phone works, and most of the time will latch on to the digital signal but analog works fine as well.

I'm now considering buying one for the car as well, it will no doubt clear up most of the dropped calls.

dusty

Reply to
dusty

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