cell phone signal repeater

   / cell phone signal repeater #12  
+1 on the Wilson products which are all good to great.
Weboost seems to get variable reviews, but it could just be poor installations.
CellX has the highest amplification, but are locked to a single carrier. Since your visitors could use WiFi calling, I personally wouldn't sweat it.

Locally, the cell tower maps are quite inaccurate, both as to location and signal strength, and at the end of the day, your best signal may be bounced off a hillside and coming from an unanticipated direction.

Just to set expectations; you can turn one bar into four or five, but not zero into something. That's where having signal on your roof is great. To get the best signal, you want your external antenna as far away from your inside antenna as possible given the cable lengths it came with, and you want them pointing opposite directions ideally. (E.g. Rooftop antenna pointing east to the city, inside pointing west.) That arrangement lets the amplifier turn itself up to the maximum power, and not be limited by feedback, like someone with a microphone stepping in front of a speaker. If you can tolerate the hassle of tuning the antenna by slowly turning it and checking signal strength, you will get a better signal in the house. If you only have one bar at the roof, I would strongly recommend a (highly) directional antenna, a log dipole/Yagi style or parabolic. (Fiddly to align, but worth it.) Finally, don't expect great coverage inside, as the inside antennas are low power since they are close to people. Directional indoor antennas will project signal farther.

All the best,

Peter
 
   / cell phone signal repeater #13  
herm0016 said:
www.wilsonamplifiers.com

weBoost Home MultiRoom + High Gain LPDA Antenna Bundle - 470144-LPDA

The weBoost Home MultiRoom 470144 is a great cell phone signal booster for those who need a multi-carrier, targeted cellular signal coverage up to 5,000 sq. ft. but do not want to deal with drilling holes, a complex outdoor installation, or running cable. This cellular signal booster features a...
www.wilsonamplifiers.com www.wilsonamplifiers.com

thinking about this set up. i'm willing to put some money into a quality system.

i should have line of sight to 5 towers about 8 miles away, i would have to get a couple hundred feet up to get line of sight to other towers about 5 miles away. that super yagi antenna should do better at a long distance with line of sight.
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Careful on saying a few hundred feet up. Federal rules on antenna towers are legal 200 feet or less with an FCC license. As for non FCC license being required, 60FT on a pole or tower is the limit. BUT, there are other ways to get higher. ;) Not with a balloon either. LOL Natural structures are exempt so long as the antenna top will not poke above them. There are plenty of Ham radio people on the forum here that could help on how to legally locate and reach the maximum height you need.
 
   / cell phone signal repeater
  • Thread Starter
#14  
bmaverick said:
Careful on saying a few hundred feet up. Federal rules on antenna towers are legal 200 feet or less with an FCC license. As for non FCC license being required, 60FT on a pole or tower is the limit. BUT, there are other ways to get higher. ;) Not with a balloon either. LOL Natural structures are exempt so long as the antenna top will not poke above them. There are plenty of Ham radio people on the forum here that could help on how to legally locate and reach the maximum height you need.
Click to expand...

yea, i'm not putting up a tower. as far as natural structures, there are none. i think our chimney is the highest thing not made of rock/dirt on our property. and certainly the highest thing within 100s of feet of the house.

we have about 1 bar most of the time, so i think we are good candidates for this.
 
   / cell phone signal repeater #15  
herm0016 said:
yea, i'm not putting up a tower. as far as natural structures, there are none. i think our chimney is the highest thing not made of rock/dirt on our property. and certainly the highest thing within 100s of feet of the house.

we have about 1 bar most of the time, so i think we are good candidates for this.
Click to expand...

Around here there's a wifi ISP that regularly puts various sorts of antennae way up in trees. Could be an option if you have much of that nearby (hire a tree climber).
 
   / cell phone signal repeater
  • Thread Starter
#16  
got an app that shows towers and were you are connected, its showing the group of towers 8 miles away that are line of sight.

called "network cell info lite" works great.
 
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   / cell phone signal repeater #17  
We have WeBoost and it works great. We recently bought a 5th wheel and moved back onto our burned out property. My Wife needs cell service to work from home, and service here is marginal at best. As PONY said, 0x0=0. We got the RV Destination because it comes with a telescopic antennae and we will be taking it with us when we move to our new property.
It took some tweaking and several tech support calls, but the call and data quality are awesome. The main voice quality problem was the 'enhanced calling' setting on our phones needed to be turned off. According to their High Tier tech, we are using a tower 23 miles away on Mt Konocti, not line of sight. He was amazed. So, 8 miles line of sight should work great.
Good luck.
Patrick
 
   / cell phone signal repeater #18  
I have been thinking of buying one of these boosters, GO G32 - Cel-Fi Is anyone familiar with it? We have barely no signal, but can sometimes get a text message out in the right spot outside, so there is 'something'.
 
   / cell phone signal repeater #19  
Piston said:
I have been thinking of buying one of these boosters, GO G32 - Cel-Fi Is anyone familiar with it? We have barely no signal, but can sometimes get a text message out in the right spot outside, so there is 'something'.
Click to expand...
I looked really closely at it, and nearly bought it. It has the best gain of anything out there. My $0.02 would be to be prepared to upgrade the antenna, (parabolic) and do think about how you are separating the indoor and outdoor antennas. (Walls, roof, etc., more is better)
If you can, set your phone to report dbi instead of bars, and try to get where you are putting the antenna to give you an idea of what you are up against. If the signal is really weak, you may need to consider a parabolic antenna. It is all about getting the dbi to a reasonable level to survive amplification and transmission in your house. Cel-Fi has some great documents various places to help evaluate signal strength.

Why didn't I buy it? Three things;
  1. we had 110-120dbi signal at the house (which is really too weak),
  2. Starlink and
  3. WiFi calling.
Since the signal was so weak at the house, it seemed unlikely that a package deal from Cel-Fi was going to work out of the box. To get a decent signal that we could reasonably amplify we were going to have spend thousands on a radio tower, running power and signal hundreds of feet to maybe have signal, and if it didn't work, it would have been a $3,000 upgrade to a commercial system that could send the cell signal over fiber. With Starlink being "close", it meant that we would be spending all that money to cover us for a year or two. Once we had Starlink, we could do WiFi calling and be all set. Cell service was a nice to have, but at $2-10,000 for a year of service, not that nice.

YMMV.

All the best,

Peter
 
   / cell phone signal repeater #20  
About 8 years ago, I got rid of my land line and installed a Wilson Electronics repeater inside and an outside antenna. I only had one problem with it and rebooting cured that problem. Antenna is on a collapsible, 30 foot pole.
hugs, Brandi
 
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