question, external antennae, card modem

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

I have got a merlin cell phone card which I use with my laptop, had it for
over a year and very pleased with it except for one thing: I can't get a
signal in the house. Out on the road it works great, but, down here where my
house is, it doesn't work, even my cell phone slips into analog. We are not
far from a tower, and I have managed to figure out if I had an antennae up
in the air about 60' here, where we sit behind a low hill, I could get the
thing to work. Trouble is, I don't see a way to hook up an external
antennae to the cell phone card

Was curious to know if anyone else had been able to do this. Thanks

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

"Frank Thomas" <nospam@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Trouble is, I don't see a way to hook up an external
>antennae to the cell phone card
>Was curious to know if anyone else had been able to do this. Thanks

You can always go the route of a bi-directional wireless repeater.
There will be an antenna inside your house and one outside on the
pole. There are passive and active types, with the active ones being
a bit pricey. Use your favorite search engine to search the Internet
and you should find plenty of info about them.

Or, you can always try the poor man's repeater. Buy two antennas, put
one inside the house, and one outside on your pole, and hook them
together with a low-loss coax cable. I've never tried it, but some
folks out in Internet-land claim that it works. One issue might be
that there will be quite a bit of signal loss if your cable run is
long.

Joseph Huber
Huber.Joseph@comcast.net

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

"Joseph Huber" <huber.joseph@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:f6gnq0pa1vapnh1hdqpi33e4sn6c0smfs8@4ax.com...
> "Frank Thomas" <nospam@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Trouble is, I don't see a way to hook up an external
> >antennae to the cell phone card
> >Was curious to know if anyone else had been able to do this. Thanks
>
> You can always go the route of a bi-directional wireless repeater.
> There will be an antenna inside your house and one outside on the
> pole. There are passive and active types, with the active ones being
> a bit pricey. Use your favorite search engine to search the Internet
> and you should find plenty of info about them.
>
> Or, you can always try the poor man's repeater. Buy two antennas, put
> one inside the house, and one outside on your pole, and hook them
> together with a low-loss coax cable. I've never tried it, but some
> folks out in Internet-land claim that it works. One issue might be
> that there will be quite a bit of signal loss if your cable run is
> long.
>
> Joseph Huber
> Huber.Joseph@comcast.net


Thanks, looking around I find these guys:

http/www.coveragesolutions.net/in-building-bda.htm

They have all kinds of interesting gadgets, including an external antennae
for my cell phone; until now I did not think an external antennae was
available for it. Their kit goes in through an RF port on the phone.

I don't think this company has an external antennae for the merlin card,
but they did have one for the Sierra.

On the bi directional wireless repeater, I downloaded the manual for one of
the ones they carry for CDMA users read it , eyes glazed over, you kind of
have to know what your doing, there is a lot of devil in the details. Also
they had lots of warnings that it has to be installed by a certified
communications tech. Not that it looks hard, but, this thing has got "its
over my head" written all over it.

I think what I am going to try to do is do this in two steps, first I will
try to get the external antennae for my vision phone, run that up in the
air, and see if the phone works. If it does, then I know the air card will.
Will keep looking for a kit for the merlin, but I suspect I will have to go
with a new Sierra card, there does not seem to be enough information to
figure out how to reliably get in to the merlin card, although some internet
sources reference a port on the back of it, and I did see a tiny rubber plug
that might lead to something

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.sprintpcs (More info?)

Actually, I think I found one for the Merlin C201:

http/www.altwireless.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Session_ID=41B09F58000B2582000008E800000000&Screen=PROD&Store_Code=altwire&Product_Code=AKLR356504

I have a Sanyo 5300, and my plan was to first hook up an antennae to it, see
if I could even get a signal here, and then try to get one for the c201.
Well, it turnss out the kit for the 5300 goes in through the RF port, and I
got on the phone with the manufacturer's tech group, I located the plug on
my cell phone, pulled it off, and golly, it looks exactly like the whats
under the plug on the C201 card.

I ordered it, should be here next week, will let you all know if it works