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Thread: Which cell signal booster?
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01-04-2019, 10:26 AM #11
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John, in case you're still interested:
We're currently in the northern Everglades where our T-Mobile service is almost non-existent. No service at all inside the trailer, one bar and marginal service outside the trailer.
We still have the Wilson WeBoost 4GX RV we got last year. This year I replaced its outside antenna with the Wilson OTR trucker antenna and - used in some of the same locations as it was a year ago - that antenna (or network improvements) gave us slightly better service in marginal locations.
However here in the Everglades the 4GX RV is not enough. It gives us one bar and unreliable marginal service inside the trailer and its coverage is very limited - we have to perch very close to the inside antenna to get the boost.
Prior to coming here I purchased the Wilson WeBoost Connect 4G, which may be the 65db booster you said didn't work well for you? It's working well here... three bars, signal improved from -121 to -90 (still not a strong signal, but reliable and usable).
The Connect 4G is promoted as being sufficient to cover a 5,000 sq ft house so I was concerned that it would oscillate too much between inside and outside antennas and be so throttled-back as to be useless. However I took seriously the installation instructions and separated inside and outside antennas by more than 20 feet VERTICALLY - I've used a 15-foot fibreglass painter's pole and a 16-foot telescoping mast I have from a company called Buddipole to get about 23 feet of separation. The inside antenna is located almost directly under the outside antenna.
Upon first powering up the amplifier flashed some red indicating interference between the antennas, but still improved the signal from -121 to -100. I put a piece of tin foil over the top and back of the inside antenna to shield it from the outside antenna and tried again - got -90db and three bars.
So for this situation - very weak local cell service - this product is NOT too much for RV use as I feared it might be. I suspect that we could move to areas with stronger cell service and still get trailer-filling boosted signals by using tin-foil shields to keep the antennas isolated from each other. The Connect 4G quickly adjusts itself to avoid performance-killing oscillation. However there would probably come a point at which local service was just too strong - too much signal flying around between antennas - and this device would become unusable.
In that event, where signal is too strong to use the Connect 4G but not strong enough to give un-boosted good service inside the trailer, we can still fall back on the 4GX RV since we already have it. We've ended up with an expensive (~$1K) solution now owning two boosters, but one that I think will cover us in most situations.Last edited by boyscout; 01-04-2019 at 10:35 AM.
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