Cellular antenna for my house??? .....

[nmfire10]

Is there anything I can do to boost the celluar strength in my house, more specficily, my room. I already have a mast on the house with coax into the room. Is there an antenna I can put outside and maybe an antenna inside sortof like that passive repeater for car windows?

Matt

[Pj]

Move to another town since you only have two towers! (and your lucky to have those too!)

A buddy of mine used a mag mount 900MHz antenna and worked great for him....however he used an old motorola car adaptor thingy. Unless you have a nicer nokia or motorola that supports the car ports, don't know where to point you to..

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

Most newer portable cell phones can support an external antenna.

On a Nokia 5xxx series, there is a little rubber "dot" under the antenna, on the back of the phone. Open up the phone, pop out that dot, and surprise, there is a really tiny RCA-looking connector there. My Eric$$on r278d (that I hate) has the same sort of thing under the antenna, on the back, too.

My grandma lives in a wooded location in a rural area. She can't get cell phone service at here house worth beans. If she wants to call us, she has to drive down the road, where coverage is better. I'm considering putting a nice ol' 800 MHz yagi on her roof, and pointing it at the cell site.

Make a short coax run to where she usually keeps/uses her phone.

Okay, so we might as well just get some IMTS gear, but it sort of bothers me that she has to pay long distance on her land-line phone bill to call us, even though she has free long distance on her cell phone. And she calls us a lot.

[nmfire10]

I wonder... do you think one of those "Passive Repeater" things they sell glass mount for a car would work on a house window? Or is the window too thick?

Matt

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

I wonder... do you think one of those "Passive Repeater" things they sell glass mount for a car would work on a house window? Or is the window too thick?

Matt

Most house windows are double-paned glass. This is required by building code for safety, and helps reduce energy loss.

Car glass is single pane.

I don't think it would work well.

[nmfire10]

I found a few companies that sell both signal amplifiers that connect by wire to the phone and then out to an external antenna. You can get mobile antenna, fiberglass base antennas, and even the above mentioned Yagi antenna. They also have wireless "repeaters". You put an antenna on your roof and an antenna in the house and presto!

The wired boosters go for about $150 and the repeater systems were in the $2000 range. I was hoping for something a little cheaper.

[Hightower]

A company called Wilson Electronics has external cellular antennas. I know of people using the mobile mount cell antenna on their house/summer homes, as well as one peep using the Wilson cellular beam antenna.

just an option for ya.....

[Dave]

You can look into a Bi-Directional amp from http://www.cellularspecialties.com. Most companies need these after the nicely dressed Nextel sales people say "oh yes, they will work in your building". You can buy them through Tessco.

[JAYMZ]

Try going to http://www.sandman.com they've got Cellular POTS adapters with antenna stands that work very very nicely. It will also allow you to hook up a regular telephone you your cell phone. They are quite nice but you can't dial the internet with them. Between the POTS adapter and the antenna it'll be about $250 but I think the antenna alone is about $75 or so. Check it out...it's a great site, they also have the codes for some cell phone to get them into service modes etc(how your provider programs it for you phone number... ). And if you order from there and they ask you where you heard about them. Just tell them you heard about them from "The Mart" magazine. It's a TelCo industrie magazine.

[nmfire10]

Move to another town since you only have two towers! (and your lucky to have those too!)

A buddy of mine used a mag mount 900MHz antenna and worked great for him....however he used an old motorola car adaptor thingy. Unless you have a nicer nokia or motorola that supports the car ports, don't know where to point you to..

HAHAHA. Actually, there are 3. There is the old PD tower downtown, the Conn Light & Power Tower on the east end of downtown, and the beheamoth tower at my firehouse up north. I live about 1.5 miles from that beheamoth tower, but the signal in my house and around it ust sucks. I live in a creator. There is a Mt to my east, cliff and mountains to my west, and I am too far north to reach the towers downtown. An antenna on my roof would do wonders for me.

[wa2zdy]

The "passive repeaters" are cheap, you ever notice that? You get what you pay for - in this case, nothing. Junk.

IMTS . . . is there still IMTS service in the US? Geez, I remember listening to that as the start to scanner listening for me, and what a trip that was! Long gone here in the NYC/Philadelphia/NJ area. Heck, I even remember low band IMTS on 35/43MHz! That was a few years ago.

I vote for the yagi pointed at the cell site, or any other commercial grade 800MHz antenna.

Good luck,

Chris

[Tom in D.C.]

1. Don't use a portable cellfone. You'll lose all of the power (a whopping 600 mW maximum, more often 200 mW if the received signal is sensed as being a strong one) in the feedline.

2. Pick up a used 3-watt car phone and get it programmed for your number and the 3-watt phone's ESN. It'll most likely be an analog unit, but with a relatively short (you hope) RG8 feedline and a simple roof antenna cut for a quarter-wave on 860 mHz it'll get into your nearest cell site DFQ all the time. Don't forget the radials, by the way. The same rules apply as when you fab a VHF or UHF ground plane antenna.

3. A good 13VDC regulated supply is the last item you'll need and then you'll be in business.

Tom, W2NJS
...in D.C.

[alex]

2. Pick up a used 3-watt car phone and get it programmed for your number and ESN.

If you do decide to go this route, you'll have to get quite an old phone to change the ESN in it. Also, keep in mind that your current phone cannot be powered on while the other one is, and vice versa. Powering them both on will cause the network to go um, yeah... that doesn't look right, and poof, both phones are now disabled at the hardware level.

Cloaning your ESN is also not something that should be done anyway. I believe this also will ONLY work if you have a current analog phones, as digital uses different numbers for network id's, though not sure... Might need a dual band phone to make it work, and make sure your plan allows for analog minutes.

-Alex

[nmfire10]

If I have to go anolog with sprint, they charge some rediculous per minute fee. I can't do that with the old car phones, I'd go broke. The whole reason I want to do this is so I can walk around with the phone or have it connected to my laptop for highspeed data.

One of the guys at the FD suggested I just put the yagi on the roof and another antenna inside with coax inbetween. Nothing special, just an antenna inside and out and it would help.

[radioconsult]

Tom: Big NO NO.
Alteration of a cell phone's ESN is a Federal Crime and most states have passed State laws prohibiting the mere possession of a communications device with an altered ESN. Bag phones can be found at lots of pawn shops, garage sales, etc. You can still place them on cellular service, in most markets. However, you will loose the digital features, such as caller ID.
Take your cell phone up on the roof of your house and see if you have decent coverage. Then as other contributors have suggested, check and see if your phone has an external antenna jack (most do). Then put up an outside antenna with RG-8 and adaptor and a short connector for the phone. Make sure that your phone is a real cell phone (800 MHz) not a PCS phone (1900 MHz). Use quality connectors to minimize ISI with plated type connectrors.

[Jaqx]

I think what nmfire10 is wanting to do is take his digital handset in his house and have decent service. A lot of public safety professionals are required to be available 24/7 and their point of contact is often a cell phone, often a handset provided by the employing agency. Hooking an antenna to the handset is a reasonable alternative but really not the easy solution he and others are looking for.

The way I read this he is wanting to mount a cellular antenna (likely a mobile antenna) on the side/top of his house and run a short piece of coax directly to another cellular antenna (likely a mobile antenna) that is mounted somewhere hidden inside his house attempting to make a poor man's "passive reapeter" giving the signal an easy pathway out of and into his house.

This all sounds kind of good in theory but, has anybody ever succesfully done it? If so, how and what was used to make it work.

Tks,
Jaqx

[Tom in D.C.]

Any idiot knows that fooling with an ESN is not permitted, and that duplicating ESN's is likewise not permitted. I meant that he should use an old, 3-watt analog phone, properly set up (which is why I mentioned the ESN), so that the signal could get out of the house since it would be 3-watts. No digital, nothing fancy, just an old analog phone which would definitely get into the nearest cell site DFQ.

I'm really sorry at this point that I even commented. It's a stupid topic anyway. I hope that we're not developing an "Everybody wants to be a cop" mentality like we used to have on some of the New York repeaters in the 70's.

Tom, W2NJS
...in D.C.

[nmfire10]

I think what nmfire10 is wanting to do is take his digital handset in his house and have decent service. A lot of public safety professionals are required to be available 24/7 and their point of contact is often a cell phone, often a handset provided by the employing agency. Hooking an antenna to the handset is a reasonable alternative but really not the easy solution he and others are looking for.

The way I read this he is wanting to mount a cellular antenna (likely a mobile antenna) on the side/top of his house and run a short piece of coax directly to another cellular antenna (likely a mobile antenna) that is mounted somewhere hidden inside his house attempting to make a poor man's "passive reapeter" giving the signal an easy pathway out of and into his house.

This all sounds kind of good in theory but, has anybody ever succesfully done it? If so, how and what was used to make it work.

Tks,
Jaqx

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO DO!! And yes, it is PCS.

[Lord Velveeta]

Well, I have no idea if this would work, but you might want to mount a high gain YAGI or quagi antenna on the highest point outside of your house pointing right at the cell tower, and linking it to a high gain colinear antenna in your house in a central point as a passive repeater.

Not sure what (if any) benefit this would give you, but there is only one way to find out if it works...

LV

[nmfire10]

Thats what i was thinking of doing. I have found that this new phone I have works much better than my old one. I'll have to think about it a little more before I spend any money on it.

[ExKa|iBuR]

Regardinmg the passive repeater idea....

In my old house, I had a UHF yagi antenna mounted on the roof pointed in the direction of a commercial repeater.

I had it running into the house (coax) into a ceiling-mounted 1/4 wave antenna.

Reason is that the handheld wouldn't get a good signal at all into the repeater.

Once I put this sytem in place, the signal was almost perfect.



I would assume this would work just fine with cell phones as well.


Mike

[KitN1MCC]

ok here are some options.

if you phone has support for a handfree kit you can go that route.
then there is the adapters that plug into the phone.

As for passive. some work some dont.

just remeber that CDMA will not pass thruough acctive rpt systems inless it is a CDMA on big $$$$

you can also put a beam on the roof and a 3db gain in the room the some times work.

i used to work for Verizon in the stores i used to hear this all the time