Need advice for hilly, forested location

Hermit

Hello people,

My attempts to escape the WildBlue satellite service eventually led me to this forum. I now have a Franklin CDU-680 and I'm hoping for some advice on how to get a reasonable and consistent connection without spending more than I need to.

Our home is in a hilly, forested area with no promise of cell coverage by any provider. Inside the house I usually see no connection. Just outside I can get and maintain a 1xRTT connection, but it's so slow I don't have the patience to finish a speed test. If I take my laptop 50-100 feet into the woods and up a slight hill I can get a rev A connection at speeds considerably better than my WildBlue connection. Since this is Oregon and I don't want to drown my laptop, I'm not sure how repeatable this is. It seems like slight movements in any direction can make a big difference, but I haven't stayed in one place long enough to know if the signal varies at a fixed location.

So before I start spending money I thought I'd ask for a little advice. I've seen many good comments about the Wilson Trucker antenna. Is it likely that just adding that antenna will improve things near the house so I don't need to run a cable into the woods? I'm hoping that just getting the antenna a little higher will make a big difference. Anyone have experience adding 20 feet of cable to this antenna to put in on top of a pole?

I've also seen comments about using directional wifi antennas. It seems like if I had one of those aimed correctly this time of the year, I could see the direction of the tower when the maple leaves return in spring and I might have a chance at removing branches or trees and keeping a better signal.

I'm a little overwhelmed by all the information here, so I hope you'll forgive me for asking things that have probably been answered. I would greatly appreciate any advice or answers to those questions that I forgot to ask. Are there other things I should try before deciding on an antenna or other equipment?

Alex · Site Admin Joined: 19 Sep 2006 Posts: 1943

Hermit

SCRich · EVDO User Joined: 04 Jun 2007 Posts: 28

-110 to -95 is very poor but you got to work with the best you have and I have the same exact signal strength at my home outside then about -85 at the end of the driveway which is 300ft away.

I purchased a repeater and it has done well for me but it does not make EVERYTHING happy, I still have to do odd things. A repeater will amplify your signal as a ratio of what comes into it so if you have a weak signal going in the amplified signal will be better but not the maximum it could be. So since I have a -95-100 outside my repeater only covers a very small room well with a stron signal. Soon after I walk out of the room the signal will be weak or gone. BUT it works for me! I refuse to pay the phone company $30 for local calls on a 40 year old piece of copper wire.

I went ahead and bought a bluetooth adapter so I leave the phone a couple of feet way from the repeater and pair it up to the adapter which then feeds any old regular phone or cordless that I can use anywhere in the house or yard. I also set up a computer next to the repeater with my EVDO card and am using ICS into my home network for the other computers. It's a waste of computer, electricity and heat so I am eagerly awaiting my Cradlepoint Router from the 3gstore from what FedEx says tomorow. So how much are you willing to do to get EVDO service at the house ?
Can you get power over where your best signal is ? Are you willing to set something up waterproof to hold a small EVDO router and then bring CAT5 back into the house or possibly if the signal is strong enough to do a WiFi connection from the back yard router back to the house ? A -95 signal then adding a good external antenna on a pole with good quality cable to connect it back to the EVDO card could do the trick for you.

Possibly if you can get really high up with a GOOD antenna you may be able to do a repeater at the house instead of having to go up the hill at the back yard. Any chances of clearing the treeline ?

Rich

xrayman

guzie · EVDO Newbie Joined: 15 Dec 2007 Posts: 9

I would go with a Yagi directional style. They are a little more to set up and aim properly but they are stronger than an omni. I was getting 98-93 signal strength inside the house and it would vary so much if you just bumped the modem. The one Verizon tower I see is the the south east of me. I mounted an omni outside along the side of my house and I was able to get down to 88 signal strength but the download/ upload speeds went in the tank. I was actually faster at 93 than I was at 88 on the omni outside. All I could figure was that I was getting interference with some other signal outside. Since the omni sees all around I had no clue what was interfering. I tried putting it up higher along the roof and the signal actually got worse. I only was using 12' of cable too. Thats when I went with a Yagi. Now the Yagi style I bought is strictly a 800 mhz unit and it is pulling in much better. I now have between 83-86 outside so far. I have been making small tweaks to the position to try to get it even better. I tried putting the yagi up high along the roof and signal was worse there too. I am using about 15' of cable and have the antenna mounted in the same spot I had the omni. I live in a valley on top of a hill and we are encircled by trees. I have about 150 yards clear of trees in front of the yagi. My next step is to get a amp to bring the signal strength even better.

Hermit · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 8:51 pm Post subject:

Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions.

We finally got a couple days of better weather that allowed me to do some more testing. It doesn't look real promising to me, but perhaps those of you with more experience will tell me otherwise.

My hope was that a bit more elevation might solve my problem. I bought a 16 ft USB cable and strapped the modem to a PVC pipe. I found no significant difference in signal strength from ground level to about 20 ft up anywhere near the house.

So I spent much of today exploring the woods for places that gave me a good connection. The problem I'm having is that my signal seems to vary more with time than location. The best spot I found, about 40 to 50 feet from the house, will often give me a Rev A connection with download speeds of 500 to 1000Kb/s and 95 to 150 ms latency. But sometimes the only signal is 1xRTT and sometimes there's no signal at all. The signal strength when connected is usually around -103 but ranges from -120 to -95.

Is this normal behavior in fringe areas? How likely is it that any external antenna will allow us to stay connected?

xrayman · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject:

Hermit · Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject:

willmarth2 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 13 Dec 2007 Posts: 8

I bought a directional antenna in a hilly forested area 4 miles from the nearest antenna. I found out my strongest signal was pointing the antenna 180 degrees in the opposite direction. A tower farther away without a hill blocking it my be better. I have a constant 90dbi. I download like crazy.

xrayman · Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:06 am Post subject:

willmarth2
The hills are real good at cutting out the signal. Having a constant connection with good speed at -90dbi is great. I have found if the signal strength gets down below -90dbi the connection quality and speed degrades fast. If you are happy with the performance of your system that is great. I would try to get a little stronger signal, some place in the mid -80s could produce better speed. Try a re-point, just a little right, left and tilt up, or down could help. Just a little more height could help also. Only my 2¢ worth of thoughts.

Hermit · Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:27 pm Post subject:

I finally got my grid antenna a couple days ago. Does anybody have any good tips for aiming these things? I think my biggest problem is that the signal strength is constantly changing. I can't tell if a change is caused by my rotation of the antenna or if it just changed because it was about to change anyway!

I did have some luck yesterday, though. I mounted it on a 10 ft pvc pipe, leaned it against the house, aimed it about the right direction and ran the cable to my favorite recliner. I found the signal bouncing between -110 and -103, but found I could connect and run speed tests showing downloads between 400 and 1000. I used it that way for a couple of hours before the connection died. I'm a little confused why this even worked, since the antenna was at a level below the peak of the metal roof on the south side of the house aimed at towers a couple miles north.

jackrodgers · EVDO Addict Joined: 23 Mar 2006 Posts: 1131