Cell Signal Booster

Lots of threads about boosters ... They do work, but it's a mixed bag.

There are single-phone boosters far under the price range you're looking at. 400-500 sounds like a repeater, designed to service multiple phones at the same time.

A place to start, with your Jetpack would be hooking up an external antenna mounted to your ladder / roof. The three older Jetpacks I've had all had two antenna connectors on them (including the Walmart StraightTalk one). Hook up one or two antenna and see how that does.

If nothing else, you can use the antenna with the booster / repeater you buy, as they generally come with a very basic external antenna.

I talked to a guy that was laying pipeline somewhere out east and he said the cell booster he had on his truck was well worth it. He said a weak signal at 1 bar could be amplified to bring his phone up to 5 bars. That boost was enough for him to stream data to watch movies when he was in his camper for the night. The one he had was made be WeBoost and ran around $400.

Iraqvet05 wrote:
He said a weak signal at 1 bar could be amplified to bring his phone up to 5 bars... The one he had was made be WeBoost and ran around $400.

I have a weboost and I would take that story with a grain of salt. I've managed maybe 1 or 2 more bars.

2oldman wrote:

Iraqvet05 wrote:
He said a weak signal at 1 bar could be amplified to bring his phone up to 5 bars... The one he had was made be WeBoost and ran around $400.

I have a weboost and I would take that story with a grain of salt. I've managed maybe 1 or 2 more bars.

Same here, it will help some, but I've never had it improve that much.

We have a We Boost and the sight we in right now my phone doesn’t work out side the 5er, inside I can get there to four bars of LTE.

We have a Maximum Signal Max Amp RV that has worked well for us in a number of deep fringe areas where we otherwise had no signal. The Max Amp inside antenna transmits the boosted signal throughout our motorhome, so there's no need to be close to the antenna or use a cradle.

2oldman wrote:

Iraqvet05 wrote:
He said a weak signal at 1 bar could be amplified to bring his phone up to 5 bars... The one he had was made be WeBoost and ran around $400.

I have a weboost and I would take that story with a grain of salt. I've managed maybe 1 or 2 more bars.

Bars are NOT a good indicator of actual signal strength. One phone could go from 1 to 5, another 1 to 2 and if you go and check actual signal level they end up being the same.

Now with that said, I have the weboost in both my trailers. I've been in many places with no reception and gone to very good voice and ok internet. Gone from -120db signal levels to -80db. -120 is virtually no signal. -80 is a decent signal for voice and data, about the same signal level I get at home and it is plenty adequate.

at other places I've gone from a -100db signal down to -80 or -70. At least with verizon to keep the system at max capacity they won't let the phone transmit with a higher power than needed to meet a minimum BER.

How much improvement you get depends on not only distance to the tower but how MANY users are connected to it. I've been in places where the booster will give a very strong signal but very slow data at times. during breakfast or lunch or evening data rate is very slow. In between very high data rate. Reason is a large number of users near the single tower at peak times.

On most phones in the setup or info screen you can see actual signal strength. And there are apps that will also do the same.

In any case, there must be enough signal for the booster to receive from the tower and then transmit with enough power back to the tower with a decent BER (bit error rate)

And I've found at times that no luck with an ATT phone, but strong Verizon, other places just the opposite.

I chose the ALFA 2000 and their 12 db whip antenna.

Multiple times with a laptop 2 bars slow response
The the Alfa 2000 max bars and decent speed.
with the Alfa 2000 + 20 db yagi antenna which is highly directional about 3" diameter and 20" long. Multiple times I picked up 40+ addresses over flat terrain, Distance 2+ miles, pegged the bar meter but the ISP repeater sucked. Impossible to watch streaming.

The 2 watts output dramatically improved transmitter response time.

USB connected. Simple installation CD ROM

A Wilson electronics directional antenna may also be necessary along with the signal booster. You mount it on a mast and then you can turn the mast.

Bob Wells interviews a guy in this YouTube video that uses one. He does consulting work for designing solar systems and uses to keep in contact with his customers.

Bob Wells also has some other YouTube videos interviewing him one of which covers the solar system he has for his trailer. He's got 1185 watts of solar and he can run 2, 5000 BTU air conditioners during the day using only about 800 watts. One he has mounted permanently in the upper curbside wall of his trailer. The other one is mounted so he can quickly install and remove it from the front curbside bedroom window.

mobeewan wrote:
A directional Wilson electronics directional antenna may also be necessary. You mounted on the mast and then you can turn the mast.

There's some YouTubers that boondock a lot and use them to get better reception for uploading and downloading videos.

when all else fails I dig out the yagi coupled to the weboost, but being a somewhat PITA to orient the yagi if you don't know where a tower is I go with an external omni on about a 15ft pole first.

If the yagi doesn't work I just turn on the garmin inreach and text or email whomever I want to contact and they can text back. As long as I can get to an iridium sat it gets through. And getting to an iridium sat is generally pretty much guaranteed.