Cell Phone Accessory Remote Antennas?

[Jeff Wisnia]

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

http://wilsonelectronics.com/

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."

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Jeff Wisnia <jwisnia@conversent.net> wrote:

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

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.

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 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

 

[dusty]

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