How tough is the Wilson Trucker External Omni?

ansar

Howdy All,

Anyone know if the Wilson Trucker is pretty rugged?

The reason I ask is that I took my antenna and laptop outside and was testing the signal strength. It got jostled around a little climbing the ladder to test on top of my house. After coming back inside and putting the antenna in the same window I had it, I am not getting a worse signal. I was getting -86 to -88 before going outside and now I am getting -92 to -98 or worse at times. I am wondering if I could have damaged it somehow. It wasn't like I gave the antenna to my son to play with as a sword Smile

, but curious if they are easily broken.

Thanks for your time.

Llama · EVDO Junkie Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 180

The antenna itself should be pretty tough since it is meant for external with wind loads from a moving vehicle. I took mine, mounted it to the luggage rack on the Suburban and drove 1000 miles each way on a trip, with speeds up to 90mph (yeah, I know...).

Antenna worked perfect in motion and works just as well back, even including some low speed strikes at fast food over height warning bars. I'd like to think that jostling from moving it up/down a ladder for test should not be a problem for the mast/coil.

Now, I suppose it is possible that you damaged the coax, the pigtail or either of the connections to your card. Your signal strengths are pretty low (mine were too, which is why my omni is on my roof, with an amp and 50' of LMR400) so seeing fluctuations like that may not be terribly unusual. Locking my card to EVDO and setting the Roam flag as appropriate for your area really cleared up any disconnect, rate fallback issues I was having.
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--Larry

schillit · Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 11:52 am Post subject:

I have had mine mounted to my roof for the last 6 months or so. It survived a Minnesota winter pretty easily, including some big snowstorms. So yes, I think it is very rugged. In addition, I installed 25 feet extra lmr-400 cable and that stuff is really well built. Kind of funny, but now DSL is available at my house so I don't need the antenna or cable. If anyone wants to buy them, PM me.

Rangerw · Posted: Tue May 15, 2007 11:28 am Post subject:

Bought my setup bck in Oct or Nov and got the booster and the omni (trucker). The omni didn't seem to help on the 1XRTT which was all we had service for. I had it screwed to the eave of the house with the cable just ran theough the window which we cracked open to save drilling the wall till we were sure.

I decided on the booster so just threw the cable out the window where it laid in the dirt, mud, water etc. It had run ins with the weed eater, dogs and lived through a flood that covered it 6" It laid there till two weeks ago when we finally got EVDO in my area. The booster antenna couldn't hold a good signal and fell back to 1XRTT which caused the KR1 to go into arrest ech time.

So moved the Omni near where the router was now, brushed off the cable, looked for chew marks, cuts etc. All was well. Drilled a hole, shoved it through and plugged that puppy in. Haven't seen 1XRTT since. Made a world of difference with EVDO over the 1XRTT.
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A simple man.