Verizon Wireless → Wilson 4g booster and/or MiFi w/Antenna

While camping in the woods (Washington state) I found locations where 4g is excellent (near a freeway). There is another spot I went to that didn't have signal further away from the freeway, initially. I spent lots of time finding a spot for my phone at the second location and then suddenly, 4G signal 2 bars. Perfect. I could do my work no problems.

I would need to redetect the tower (shutdown, remove sim, add sim, boot) at times and when we leave and come back its a pain to get the right spot again. Plus, sometimes it hits 1x signal with 1 bar.

I'm looking for solutions to get a reliable signal in this situation. The idea of a Wilson 4g booster was less good. There needs to be signal for the amp to boost. It does not work like I wanted in that it would make the phone find 4g or keep 4g in an area that is just outside the coverage zone.

The second idea was a Verizon Mifi type device with a Yagi 700 MHz 4G LTE Cellular Antenna set up.

Anyone use external antennas with success or know if it would work for this scenario?

Does your phone have an external antenna port? What kind of phone is it? Yes, using an external antenna can help in your situation. I have done it with USB modems without using an additional amplifier. I assume you are using solar or muscle powered battery re-chargers as you are camping, correct? Therefore an amplifier would be almost impossible to power without a very large solar panel or a very large muscle powered electricity source.

I'm glad to hear of your success with a USB modem in a rural area and appreciate your response. Its good to know I'm not spinning my wheels.

My phone doesn't have an external antenna port. It is a Motorola Droid Razr Xt912 (first version from 2011).

In regards to the electrical energy source in the woods, my laptop and workstation run off a hard wired inverter I mounted in a Chevy Volt. Interestingly, the Volt does not come with a 120v AC socket. When the starter battery gets low from inverter draw, I powered on the car. About every 1 - 2 hrs. The Volt has a factory part that does the work an alternator would perform. It is a reducer kind of thing converting 360 V to 12v and the gas engine does not need to turn on for that, although as an aside the traction battery is charged to 1/2 full once a day with the gas engine. GM designed the car so the brake booster, steering and such can run off the 12v battery in an emergency so they added a beefy "alternator" and a glass mat starter battery.

Since the Wilson 4g booster (cradle type, not the 70 db amp) comes with an antenna port, what do you think about having the droid sit in the cradle and then connect the Yagi antenna to the cradle antenna port? Also, what antenna works for you?

My antenna is Desktop mobile: »www.wilsonelectronics.co ··· -antenna

or

Mini Magnetic Mount:
»www.wilsonelectronics.co ··· antennas

Yagi would need some form of tripod stand, like a low cost camera tripod with some homemade attachment system. There are retail tripods for antennas, but they might be too heavy for camping. It would need to be kept far away from the cradle, about 6 meters if I remember correctly, and you have to point it away from the cradle. Otherwise massive phone destroying feedback loop will be created.

»www.wilsonelectronics.co ··· -antenna

»www.solidsignal.com/cvie ··· Supplies

»www.l-com.com

»evdotips.blogspot.com

»www.wpsantennas.com

»3gstore.com

The above links I have used to get equipment and information.

I would start with the small magnetic mount or desktop attached to the cradle. If that does not work step up to the full size magnetic. If that fails Yagi it is.

I appreciate the assistance. The Desktop mobile looks unobtrusive.

L-Com has unique offerings that I liked such as the NEMA weatherproof enclosures. I haven't been to those sites before (aside from wilson).

As an aside, you may already know about opensignal, but they have some data about tower locations from their site »opensignal.com and their apps as well as API access for software developers. Verizon connects us to cell towers that are not their own and pay companies for the usage (said by Verizon support).

I was aware of opensignal.com. It is interesting, but is full of problems related to the way it handles information requests after the initial data request has been satisfied. Same as it was years ago.

With the Desktop Mobile you might have to get some hook and loop tape(Velcro) and a base to get it to stay in the highest signal orientation. It is directional, so you want it stable. I had to use Velcro type tape to mount it to the top of my office partition to get it to stay pointed in the correct direction. Other people create mounts from camera mounts for tripods that they clamp to the partition or car door. The need for orientation is one reason so many go with the omni-directional magnetic mount as a first try. Car roof, car hood, car trunk lid, old plain steel plate, old steel fry pan, etc. But, if you know where the tower is, then the directional Desktop might be better for you to try first.

Opensignal is less accurate than I'd like and does not reflect the fact that I can get signal at this campsite I'm at now. It shows signal dropping off outside the boundary of the nearest freeway. I think ad companies may use it or a similar offering because corvetteforum grabs my coordinates and when I looked up the location, the coordinate was the same as opensignal (70 miles away and 2,500' down in elevation).

The most accurate data I have seen on tower locations is, and you probably know about this, can be found from fcc's data on tower locations. I'm recalling cell towers need to be registered there only if they meet requirement(s). One being height. Useful for being in the boonies, but not so much when a cell tower is disguised on a church property in the city (for example). »wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp ··· arch.jsp