EVDO while rock climbing Devil's Tower

cbcbd · EVDO Newbie Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 6

I've been happily using my EVDO at home in Stamford, CT to work and had been wanting to test out my limits of where I could take it and hopefully work from those places Smile

I've gotten 1XRTT signals in most remote places like the White Mountains of NH. Not good enough for doing work but good enough signals to check emails and stuff.

This past week I was at Devils Tower, WY staying at the KOA right at the entrance of the park. There is really nothing around and I couldn't get one bar on my Verizon phone... but I did get ~80-100dBm and 1-3 bars of 1XRTT at the campground.

Anyway, I was not expecting to get anything out there in the boondocks and that got me pretty psyched.

I will continue to check out odd places where I'll be able to connect.

Doug

rlw · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 4:15 pm Post subject:

On a canoe trip in August, I was about 8 miles south of Romney, WV, on the S. Branch of the Potomac River. This is just a few miles north of a spot on the river called "The Trough".

I could only get intermittent coverage on my AT&T (ex-Cingular) cell phone, and felt lucky to see 1 bar.

With my Sprint Pantech PX500 and a 3dB Wilson magnetic base whip antenna, I got around a -95dB 1xRTT roaming signal. I stuck the Wilson antenna about 7' up on one of the steel poles holding up the picnic shelter at the campsite. It was horizontally polarized, but that didn't seem to be a problem.

I would say the connection seemed just a little faster than dialup. I could read email through a webmail interface -- someone had sent me a 7MB file -- once I moved the big files (and created a temporary "big file" filter), I could read "normal" emails using Thunderbird. Web browsing was tolerable -- Google news, USGS river levels, NWS Weather page, etc. was very usable.

It wasn't the best internet connection I ever had, but it was more than I imagined in this rather remote location.

It's kind of like those dogs that bark "Jingle Bells" -- not great to listen to, but amazing that they can even do it! Laughing

RLW