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RV Cell Phone Signal Boosters

I got my start in radio when I was young. What does it possibly have to do with RV cell phone signal boosters? I have no idea, but it’s kind of an interesting story how it all started.

Old School Ham Radio

One of my friends, Mike, had discovered a flaw in the attendance system at school. Mike set up an appointment to “job shadow” at a radio station, he was a music buff. I quickly jumped on board when I realized that we were going to be able to skip school with an excused absence.

Radio fascinated me when I toured the station. I asked the tour guide, Bryan Hyde, how a young, wide-eyed individual such as myself would be able to get started in such an industry. I was informed that occasionally, youngsters willing to get paid next to nothing were needed as “board-ops.” Board operating left me manning the control board in the studio, patching through whatever was supposed to be on the air. When Rush Limbaugh finished his perfectly timed outro into the local commercial break, it was my job to quickly take him off the air and fire our local commercial spots.

Board operating was power, but it wasn’t the coolest thing to do at the radio station. Sure, if you wanted to make money, there was always a gig in the sales department, but on-air was where all the fun was. Just being a sales person didn’t allow me the clout to say, “Don’t you know who I am?” to someone that tried to short me on the amount of meat on my sandwich.

Paying Your Dues

In those days, being able to have your actual voice heard on the airwaves took a lot of training. The older fellers called it “paying your dues.” In those days, being a radio jock was something awesome! Eventually, I talked someone into mentoring me.

I finally got a break when I moved to the radio station across town. It was a smaller radio group. No sooner had I moved over there than our radio group was purchased by the group that I had just left. “No one would lose their jobs,” we were told.

As a newlywed, when I saw people (that weren’t going to lose their jobs) start to get canned, I thought it expedient that I find a more secure position. I heard about an opening in the engineering department. I tried it out and it changed my life.

Working as Gary Smith’s apprentice, I learned a ton of great things. But I lacked the knowledge I needed to truly understand the technologies that I was working with. That’s when I decided to go to college.

Back to RV Cell Phone Signal Boosters

Eventually, that decision to go to college landed me at a job where I got to design and test cell phone signal boosters. I was able to take part in several really amazing projects! And I learned about what I believe is an amazing, untapped market. Everyone has a cell phone, and at some time or another everyone has experienced the anger of dropping a cell phone call exactly in the middle of something very important.

While I don’t yet own an RV (read about how I will someday here in my post about CellBooster and FMCA), I have been camping a time or two. In fact, last summer I visited the majestic Grand Tetons and the amazing Yellowstone National Parks with my family. It was my first time. I was blown away by the grandeur and the sheer awesomeness of nature.

While trudging through Yellowstone with a 3-year-old on my shoulders was less than a picnic, it was definitely worth the many subsequent trips to the chiropractor to realign my spine afterwards. My 3-year-old is a bit of a handful. I told him that bears eat “little boys that don’t listen to their daddies,” and it seemed to work to keep him from running off. Although, now whenever he’s “not being a listener” he runs to the window to see if there’s a bear outside our back window (we live in the desert). I may have scarred him for life.

Really Back to RV Cell Phone Signal Boosters

I noticed that while I was in the wild up yonder, there were several times that I wanted to call my parents to share the beauty with them… Or call my wife to see if she knew where the 3-year-old ran off to. Some times I wasn’t able to get a signal. It would have been really handy to have that SureCall cell phone signal booster.

If you are an RV aficionado, I can imagine that you have been SEVERAL places that you wish you could have a better cell phone signal. That’s where these cell phone signal boosters come in handy. You hook them up in your RV and voila! A terrible signal becomes great!

How Do RV Cell Phone Signal Boosters Work?

Great question! RV cell phone boosters work by using a higher gain antenna on the outside of your RV to collect what little cell phone signal that is coming from the cell tower. Then, it runs that small signal through several stages of amplifiers, filters and magic to make the signal stronger and clearer. Then it re-broadcasts that cleaner, stronger signal through another antenna inside of your RV.

Here’s a diagram with the basic setup:

Fusion2Go 2.0 RV Cell Phone Signal Booster Install Diagram
Fusion2Go 2.0 RV Cell Phone Signal Booster Install Diagram

Directional Antenna

In MOST situations, the Fusion2Go 3.0 RV Kit will work great as is out of the kit. In some situations, you might need to add a few accessories to make it work to its full potential.

For example, John called me the other day. He had a situation where he is trying to use the RV cell phone signal booster directly underneath the cell phone tower for another carrier. The challenge here is that we wanted to block out the overpowering signal and amplify the weak signal from further away. The solution? Swap out the omnidirectional outdoor antenna with a directional one. Aiming the antenna away from the close cell phone tower and towards the one far away tower will clean up the signal.

SureCall SC-230W Wide Band Directional Antenna

The directional antenna has really good gain at the front of the antenna. We call this really good “front to back ratio.” This antenna has a front-to-back ration of about 10dB. Meaning that on the SureCall SC-230W Outdoor Yagi Antenna has about 10 times stronger signal reception from the front of the antenna than it does on the back of the antenna. So by pointing it away from the stronger tower, it will help to block the strong signal and will amplify the weaker signal from the farther tower.

Extension Cables

In another situation, Jim had a bit larger RV. He was rolling in a 43 footer! I’m betting that it’s a beautiful rig! He was sure that the 40-feet of SC-240 cable that comes with the booster wasn’t going to be enough to make the run from the back to the front of the RV where he wanted to place the booster.

SureCall 240 Coaxial Cable FME-FME 10 foot SC-004-10-FF

So we outfitted Jim with a 10-foot length of SC-240 coaxial cable and a 20-foot length of SC-240 coaxial cable section of SC-240 extension cable to let him lengthen the cable a bit to make the run. Whatever your situation is, I’m sure that we can find a solution.

Don’t forget, that when you are ready to buy RV cell phone signal boosters, you can find whatever boosters, antennas or extension cables you’ll need in our online shop.

One more thing! Whatever your particular situation, I am happy to go over it with you. Just send me an email to: [email protected] and I will be more than happy to answer any questions that you have! This is my passion!

Thanks for stopping by!

-Rob

Choosing the Right Antenna

With all this nerd talk going on around here with “cell phone signal boosters” and “frequencies” and “gain” and whatnot, it is easy to see that many people can become lost in all of the industry jargon. I call it “engineese” because I consider it a different language. Every NORMAL person in this world could care less about the radio frequency spectrum and how sun spots can impact satellite communications. That’s why God created engineers. It’s what I live for. And lucky for you I consider myself a pretty good translator of the “engineese” dialect. I hope that with this article I will be able to help you choose the right antenna for your project.

In this article, we will go over the basic antenna types and we will discuss when and where you might want to employ the different options.

“Milk Was a Bad Choice”

anchorman cover photo credit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0357413/mediaviewer/rm2714340352
Anchorman Cover Photo credit: http://www.imdb.com/

In Anchorman:The Legend of Ron Burgundy (one of my favorite movies), there is a part where the depressed Ron Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell, finds himself running a marathon. While he’s running the race, he takes a drink out of a milk carton and a curdled clump of milk falls into his mouth as he says, “Milk was a bad choice.” While choosing the wrong antenna won’t cause you to gag and vacate the contents of your stomach, it can leave you with a sour taste in your mouth when it comes to cell phone signal boosters.

Basic Types of Antenna

If you were in a situation where you had nothing left to live for, you could mozy over to antenna-theory.com and read up on the different antenna types. Clearly, at that point, you would have no need for a cell phone signal booster, because you probably wouldn’t have any friends to make a cell phone call to anyway. Perusing through the site, you would count more than 25 different types of antenna. You would read up on the countless spellbinding descriptions of the different antenna types, and you’d come to the conclusion (as I did) that as far as cell phone signal boosters are concerned, there are 2 basic types of antennas. Directional and Nondirectional.

Directional antennas have greater gain in one direction than they do in another direction. Nondirectional antennas (also known as omnidirectional) have an almost uniform gain in all directions.

You: “Why don’t they just make an antenna that has really good gain in all directions?”

Me: “Great! (in a sarcastic tone) Now I have to explain to you the concepts of gain and some antenna theory.”

What the Heck is Gain?

In my life, gain is the number of pounds I just put on over this most recent Thanksgiving holiday (Seriously, I just put on about 7 pounds this week). In the cell phone signal booster industry, gain means something a little different and you will hear the word “gain” a lot.

As you can probably guess from it’s name, gain is basically a measurement of how good an amplifier (or antenna) converts electrical signals to radio signals and vice versa. While gain is an important factor in determining the “how good” an amplifier or an antenna is, it’s not important to know the intricacies of gain to understand what it is. If you are a glutton for punishment (and you might be if you are still reading this), you can hit up this wikipedia page about antenna gain and dive into all the gory details. Suffice it to say that for the purposes of what we care about, gain is a measurement of “how good” a device is at converting energy.

Basic Antenna Theory

Strap on your seatbelt, because I’m going to try to quickly dive into some basic theory here. In physics and antenna theory, there exists a theoretical “perfect” antenna called the Isotropic Antenna. This antenna only exists in theory because in REAL life there is no such thing as a perfect antenna. But if there WERE a perfect antenna, it would have a perfect gain of one all around the center of the antenna. It would be like a perfectly round exercise ball.

Isotropic Antenna is like an exercise ball
A theoretical Isotropic Antenna is like an exercise ball.

If you were to measure the gain at any point around this perfect antenna, it would measure 1 (one). This would be the perfect antenna, meaning it would have a unity gain of 1 (one) anywhere around it.

Because of physics and physical antenna characteristics, it is impossible for this antenna to exist in real life. In order for it to exist, the energy would have to radiate from a perfect point. Because of connectors, cables, physical characteristics and whatnot, this type of antenna (like world peace or an unlimited Hostess Cupcake supply) cannot exist in the “real world”.

Real Antennas

Now, imagine if you were to balance a 30-pound weight on the top of this exercise ball. The exercise ball would “squish in” at the top and the bottom and would make the exercise ball look more like an oblong shape, like a delicious Gala apple. If you were to measure the gain around the exercise ball now, there would be higher than 1 (one) gain around the sides of the ball and the top and bottom of the ball would have gain of less than 1 (one). No new gain was added or created, we just squished the ball to make more gain on the edges and less gain at the top and bottom. This would be an example of an omnidirectional or non-directional antenna.

The same thing happens with a directional antenna. If we severely squish the exercise ball (like, by having myself lay on it) we would get a severe protrusion to the sides and next to zero gain on the top and bottom (because of my fatness squishing the ball). We didn’t create any more gain, we just moved the areas of greater gain by squishing the ball around.

This antenna gain is measured in dBi, which means “decibels over isotropic”. So if a directional antenna (like THIS wide band outdoor Yagi antenna) has 8 dBi of gain, that means that this antenna, at at least one point around it has a gain of 8 decibels higher than what the ideal isotropic antenna would be.

So… Which is the Right Antenna for Me?

SureCall SC-230W Wide Band Directional Antenna right antenna for far
Outdoor Directional Yagi Antenna- Right antenna for far cell phone towers.
SureCall Wide Band Outdoor Omni 50 Ohm SC-288W right antenna for close towers
Outdoor Omnidirectional Antenna – Right antenna for closer cell phone towers.

Now, if you’re still with me, let’s chat about when you would want to use which antenna. Sometimes you will want to opt for an omnidirectional antenna, and other times you might want to choose a directional antenna. So which is the right antenna for when?

Choose a directional antenna if you know, or even have a pretty good idea of where your cell phone signal is coming from. Then you can aim your antenna at the cell phone tower and “shorten the distance” between you and the tower. There are a lot of great online tools to help you determine where your nearest cell phone towers are. CellReception.com is one of my favorites. If you don’t mind taking the time to adjust your antenna to get you the best signal, and you are not too close to the cell phone tower, a directional antenna is the right antenna for you.

If you have a great cell phone signal outside, but you just can’t seem to get good reception inside, then an omnidirectional antenna is usually the better choice. An omnidirectional antenna saves you the trouble of having to aim your outside antenna, but you sacrifice some gain for the added convenience. But in some areas, where there’s no shortage of cell phone towers, the omnidirectional antenna is better than blasting a directional antenna at the cell tower. In those situations, the omnidirectional antenna is the right antenna for your application.

Switching Up the Right Antenna

Whatever antenna you end up choosing, you need to understand that if your signal booster doesn’t seem to performing like you think it should be, it’s probably because you need to try a different antenna first. With most cell phone signal boosters offering a money-back guarantee (I offer a 45-day money-back guarantee on anything purchased from my shop), there’s almost no risk to trying an antenna on for size. Or better yet, if you are an RV user, or like to take your booster with you, keep both antennas and use whichever works best for where you are at.

I know that all of this information can seem daunting, but know that I am here for you! If you have any questions, need some help picking a booster or antenna, would like to run an idea past a booster expert or need anything else at all, drop me an email at [email protected] and I am happy to help out!

And, as always, if you are looking for the best place to buy cell phone signal boosters online, you can find everything that you need here in my shop. Thanks for stopping by, I’m excited to hear about your cell phone signal booster project!

– Rob

CellBooster FMCA

What does a CellBooster FMCA partnership mean for you? Well… If you happen to be one of the 8.9 Million households in the US that own an RV, quite a bit! And if you happen to be among the thousands that are members of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) and subscribe to FMCA’s Tech Connect+ benefit package, even MORE!

Right now, subscribers to FMCA’s Tech Connect+ benefit package can receive a coupon code that will allow them to receive 15% off of any cell phone signal booster purchase from our online shop. So essentially, this CellBooster FMCA deal means more money in your pocket. And better connection to your loved ones while on the road.

CellBooster FMCA Tech Connect Plus Partner
CellBooster -FMCA Tech Connect Plus+ Partner

You: “But what does this cell phone booster mumbo-jumbo mean, Rob?”

I’m glad you asked! These cell phone signal boosters are devices that are specifically designed to help you defeat cellular dead-zones during cross-country trips and off-the-grid overnight stays. A cellular signal booster will help provide crystal-clear call quality and improved data speeds on all North American cell carriers. These devices are specifically designed to work well in RVs.

You: “But what do you know about RVs, Rob?”

I’ll be honest, I have a pretty limited experience with motorhomes. This CellBooster FMCA deal hasn’t existed forever. In fact, let me tell you a story about my only RV experience!

Gramps and Mama RoRo

Gramps and Mama Roro
The Real Gramps and Mama Roro

My dear grandma “Mama RoRo” and grandpa “Gramps” were the greatest grandparents in the WORLD! I loved them a ton. I’m still sad that they are no longer with us. Gramps was a laid-back, easy going man that would have done ANYTHING in his power to make Mama RoRo happy.

One of Mama RoRo’s sisters (my aunt Janet) and her husband (my uncle Frank) retired pretty early in life. Frank had spent many, many years working for one of the old Bell Companies, Mountain Bell. He was a good man! He actually taught me a lot about phone wiring that I would use later in my life when I worked as a phone system vendor putting myself through college. Buy anyway, when they retired, they spent the rest of their lives as “snowbirds”. They would spend the summers at their home in Ivins, Utah and then spend the winters in Yuma, Arizona. Apparently, they loved the heat, because a summer in Ivins, Utah, on the outskirts of the desert of Saint George was hardly a picnic in the summer months!

Eventually, when my grandparents retired, my Mama RoRo could think of nothing that she desired more than spend the rest of their lives as snowbirds. She longed travelling with her sister Janet, and spending their winters in Yuma, Arizona. It wasn’t Gramp’s idea of a great time, but his undying and utter devotion to my Mama RoRo meant that he was going to do WHATEVER she wanted to!

Road Trip

One year, on their way to Yuma, they stopped by Saint George and picked up a few grandkids to make the trek with them. Their motorhome was no palace. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But, it was all my Mama RoRo wanted and that was good enough for Gramps.

My cousins and I loaded into the motorhome and we started south on I-15. We sat in back, playing our games of “Go Fish” (my cousin Kellie is a cheater). When we neared the half-way point between the beginning and end of the Virgin River Gorge, we noticed the smoke. Being the family nerd, I could clearly tell that it was the smell of an electrical fire. This was the second time that one of my grandparent’s vehicles would try to kill me. (The first time was when I fell out of the back of their moving station wagon, but that’s a different story altogether. )

Gramps quickly pulled the motorhome to the side of the road, but it wasn’t quite quick enough. The engine compartment bellowed with smoke. And the interior was starting to fill with smoke as well, because the smoke was being sucked into the air conditioning. To make matters worse, I had thrown the fire extinguisher into the very back of the motorhome in an effort to keep my brother from “accidentally” hitting me with it anymore.

Needless to say, the vacation was a total loss. I’m not sure how the motorhome fared. We waited on the side of the road for my uncle to drive past. He had left a few hours after us. There weren’t cell phones in those days, and even if there had been, the middle of the Virgin River Gorge was no place to get cell phone service. Until now!

What Might Have Been

Had this incident occurred a decade later, we might have had a cell phone. We probably still wouldn’t have been able to make a call though. Have you ever been through the Virgin River Gorge? I think it’s a beautiful drive. One of my favorites!

The Virgin River Gorge on Interstate 15 is one of the costliest highways ever constructed. The road was created by blasting out miles of limestone and sandstone walls to create a more direct route from Saint George, Utah to Beaver Dam, Arizona. The towering, beautiful canyon walls are definitely a visual distraction for the winding road. Getting cell phone signal at the base of these massive cliffs is a true challenge.

Now, I have never been important enough to be on a cell phone call while driving the length of the Virgin River Gorge, but I have a friend who definitely is. He claims that where he would normally have to end his calls before entering the gorge, with his cell phone booster, he is now able to carry his calls through most of the gorge. There are still two spots where he will drop his call, but for the most part, he is able to keep his calls alive through there.

So… (back to my story) if my motorhome experience had been decades later, and Gramps had a cell phone signal booster for his motorhome, we might not have had to sit on the side of the road for HOURS waiting for my uncle to drive by. But alas, hindsight is always 20/20.

Don’t Count Me Out

This motorhome experience hasn’t completely soured me. I would love to own one some day. That’s where YOU come in! If you buy tons of cell phone signal boosters from my shop, I will be able to buy one soon. *wink wink* Maybe I’ll even be able to pick up a sweet rig like my Uncle Jim’s. (At 15% off thanks to this CellBooster FMCA deal)

Uncle Jim's Rig
This is really my Uncle Jim’s Rig.

Someday I will be able to enjoy the open road. I’ll throw my wife and bazillion kids into the back of my rig, and we will have a BLAST! Of course, the kids will fight and argue, they will make me regret every minute of driving. But when we get there… the view will be AWESOME! And we will have great cell phone service, wherever we go, because I will definitely have a cell phone signal booster like this Fusion2Go 3.0 RV Kit! If only I’d known about the CellBooster FMCA thing a few years earlier.

What is CellBooster.us?

In order to determine what CellBooster.us is, we need to take a journey back in time… like WAY back.

*cue: Staying Alive by the Bee Gees*

Bee Gees Staying Alive Album Cover

The year was 1978! Space Invaders was revolutionizing the video game industry,  Saturday Night Fever was packing theaters, and Jimmy Carter, the simple peanut farmer from Georgia, was obliterating the US economy. While Poncherello and Baker were keeping the fictional highways of California safe, far away, in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, my mother was hunched over a porcelain throne evacuating the contents her stomach. What she thought was a serious case of the flu ended up being the greatest gift she could ever hope to receive. For behold, She was pregnant. With me!

I wasn’t the mouth-breathing jock my dad hoped that I’d be. That being said, I wasn’t COMPLETELY uncoordinated, but I wasn’t going to be Kobe Bryant… mostly because he was 6 months older than me, and growing up in Philadelphia. I was smart. I liked to take stuff apart, see how it worked, and try to put it back together. In fact, My dad was a travelling salesman. He sold inventory to video stores across the western US, and I was his VHS video fixer guy. I was apparently born with “The Knack” (as foretold in this Dilbert Clip)

Making it Official

In 2003-ish (I think), I decided to come out of the nerd closet, of sorts, and make it official. My lovely wife was sick of me changing my major, and I finally received my Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering Technology from Weber State University. I took my first job out of school as a broadcast engineer in what had become my home town (Saint George, UT).

My boss was great, but his son-in-law (who had magically, all of a sudden, learned all there was to know about business) had just taken over as the manager. We didn’t see eye-to-eye. When I expressed my concerns, (in a tirade of vocabulary with enough color to make a Leonid Afremov painting look like a Van Gogh) I was subsequently dismissed. I had been fired before (by my dad, like 800 times… we didn’t see eye-to-eye) when I had worked my summers with him in construction (he was back to being an ironworker now). It was beginning to dawn on me that maybe I wasn’t cut out for working for an employer (is anyone else sensing a pattern here?). So, I decided to go out on my own.

 One Man Wolfpack

Rob is like a one man wolfpack

I put myself through college installing and servicing phone systems. Now, I was going to do it on my own, full-time. So, I started my own business and for several years I was pretty successful. I branched into home theaters, security systems and home automation. Things were good! And… That’s when the economy tanked.

I came home from work one day, after spending all day trying to drum up some more business, and my wife had my church suit laid out on the edge of the bed. She sat me down and informed me that I had a job interview tomorrow and that it was in my best interests to make sure that I secured the job.

Naturally, with my striking good looks, my winning smile, and my overwhelming humility, I got the job. And thus began, the portion of my life that I refer to as “The Wilson Years”.

The Wilson Years

Prior to this point in my life, I hadn’t used much of my Electronics Engineering Degree. This job at Wilson Electronics (now WeBoost), would change all that. I began to do a lot of RF engineering and I absolutely LOVED it! Cell phone signal boosters were a very interesting product. Our WeBoost signal boosters were intricately designed and carefully thought out. Cell phone boosters was an underserved market and there was a huge potential for growth. I had stock options! And, of course, Wilson (WeBoost) signal boosters were easily the best products on the market. I spent considerable time testing and comparing our amplifiers to all others on the market and we dominated that market! Somehow, I was a member of the best cell phone signal booster engineering team in the world.

Face For Radio

When I was younger, I worked for several years in my local market as a radio announcer. When our owner found out that I had been in radio, and because I was so incredibly handsome, I became the “face” of Wilson Electronics. Visiting the website would submit you to myself explaining all of the different places that you could click on our website to find our different products. I was moved to the marketing department, resigned to make installation and comparison videos for the rest of my life.

Rob Richey CellBooster
This is not a body double. Believe it or not, this is really me.

So here I was, stuck in the marketing department. An engineer by birth, working as a talking head. My coworkers were AMAZING! I met a ton of really great people (more about them later), but RF Engineering is my passion, and as you can imagine, I wasn’t happy.

I had just finished reading some book about the universe or something and I had decided that I was going to move myself back to the engineering department. So, I picked up all my stuff, and I moved back into my old desk and gave myself a few projects. I felt that Wilson wasn’t innovating enough, and I decided to write a manifesto to share my thoughts on the future of the company. It was titled: “Wilson’s Future and LTE.” Apparently, the owners didn’t feel the same way that I did, and I was let go for being (and I QUOTE): “Too forward thinking and not conducive to the environment.”

Happy Trails

Apparently, when you are let go from a job, your stock options don’t go with you. A little while after I left, our owner sold the company to a capital firm and made a GRUNDLE of money. I am truly, very happy for him, he was a great mentor and boss. All of the other engineers in the company made hundreds of thousands of dollars from their stock options… And that’s when I realized that maybe I should just learn to keep my damn opinions to myself.

Anyways, I have managed to keep myself working with RF ever since I started at Wilson all those years ago (except for the year that I was working night shifts at the hotel to make ends meet after I was fired). But, things always seem to work out how they are supposed to, and I find myself in a good place now. My friends at Wilson (WeBoost), however, were not. The capital firm that took over WeBoost couldn’t seem to get a few things figured out. From what I hear, the environment over there became a little, what the Spanish would call “pesado”-  heavy. Not fun anymore.

You mean, THAT SureCall?

Some time ago, a few of my good friends from the Wilson days were approached by the owner of SureCall. They met with Hong, the owner of SureCall, and they were considering jumping ship to a better environment. I profusely warned them against it, because in my capacity at Wilson (WeBoost) I had tested many a SureCall cellular signal booster, and I noticed that they were not great. They were actually kind of terrible. Naturally, I didn’t want my buddies to go to work for a company with a terrible product.

Fast forward many years. I had one of my SureCall peeps call me and ask me if I, being an engineer, would mind testing a few SureCall products. They wanted to see how they stacked up to the competition (WeBoost). I quickly agreed because I now had the chance to prove to them how they had made the biggest mistake of their lives by moving to Wilson’s (WeBoost’s) competitor. It was going to be sweet, sweet vindication. I got out my recipe book and opened it to my “humble pie” recipe. And I was all too willing to feed it to them. Little did I know, the recipe that I was actually cooking was for crow.

Conversion

I know it’s taken me a long while to get to the point, if any of you are still here, know that I was absolutely AMAZED at SureCall’s performance. I had tested them before years ago, and they were nothing to write home about. But now, they are incredible. I tested them thoroughly and compared them side by side with the Wilson (WeBoost) comparison products.

The SureCall signal boosters stacked up so well, in fact, that I HAD to become a dealer. I needed to start selling them for myself. So, I jumped onto godaddy, registered myself a domain (CellBooster.us) and put together a site. CellBooster was founded for an almost evangelical purpose. I need to get the word out: “there is an EXCELLENT alternative to the overpriced WeBoost products out there.”

Also, I feel some kind of “spirit animal” connection to the folks there at SureCall. I am an entrepreneur at heart. I’ve built a businesses or two (or three) before and I’ve experienced all of the emotions that go along with that calling. SureCall has a passion for building great products. Their goal is to assemble a first-class team and sell their cellular signal boosters to the world. I can easily identify with that mantra.

My name is Rob and I’m a SureCall convert. I hope that you will become converted yourself. And if you decide to purchase a cell phone signal booster, I hope that CellBooster.us is where you’ll decide to buy it.

Which reminds me: You can visit our store here!

Thanks for stopping by!

Rob Richey – Cellbooster.us

 

Cellular Signal Booster Installation

best practice for cellular signal booster installation
Sample Cell Phone Signal Booster Installation Diagram

Properly installing a cellular signal booster can make or break the system’s functionality. So, a properly installed cell phone booster can give you amazing results. And a poorly installed cellular booster can have some negative effects.  With this in mind, let’s outline a few of the most important points that will lead you to positive results.

Outside Signal Level

The available signal at the outside antenna limits a cell phone signal booster’s ability. It’s important to remember, the cellular signal booster can only amplify an existing signal, it cannot create signal from nothing.

Therefore, you must place the outside antenna where it will provide the best signal from the cell phone tower. Also, keep in mind that you can have “too good” of a signal. For example, using a directional antenna too close to the cell tower could cause the booster to become “overloaded”. This “overloaded” state will keep the signal booster from performing. Because finding the right outside coverage is so crucial, there are a few tricks you can use to ensure a good outside signal.

  • Use a signal meter.

SureCall makes an amazing signal meter that works really great to help you locate the best outside signal. Just plug the outside antenna into the meter, and then aim the antenna to find the best signal level.

SureCall SC-METER-01 cell phone signal meter
SureCall Signal Meter
  • Use your cellphone.

If you are using a non-directional antenna, you can sometimes use your cell phone to locate the best coverage. Note that it sometimes take a while for the display to update on your phone. You’ll notice that you will need to allow several seconds before the phone will update.

  • Use online tools.

There are several websites that can help you to figure out where the nearest cell tower is. CellReception.com is one of my favorites. You just enter your city and state and a google map will quickly show you where the nearest towers are.

Antenna Separation

One of the biggest challenges for engineers developing cellular signal boosters is the issue of feedback. This feedback, also called oscillation, can create serious issues. Luckily, a few years ago, a brilliant engineering team patented the “oscillation detection algorithm” to help out. By the way, I used to work on that brilliant engineering team.

While we will save for another post the in-depth discussion of oscillation, the “Reader’s Digest” version is as follows. Oscillation is when an amplifier (or cellular signal booster) amplifies a signal, receives the amplified signal, then amplifies it again.

In the past, undetected oscillations could shut down a cell phone provider’s tower. Now, all new cellular signal boosters provide oscillation detection due to FCC and cellular carrier requirements. So, the booster will shut itself down if it oscillates, but if it is shut-down, it can’t amplify anything, right?

  • Keep the inside and outside antennas away from each other.

The inside and outside antennas need plenty of physical separation. Separate the antennas both vertically and horizontally. In fact, the more separation that you can get between them, the better off you are going to be. So, try to get the outside antenna as high up as possible, and the inside antenna as low as possible. Also, you could place the outside antenna on one end of the house and the inside antenna at the other, pointing away from each other.

  • Point them the opposite direction.

If you are using directional antennas, make sure that the antennas are aiming away from each other. Notice the “Sample Cell Phone Signal Booster Installation Diagram” above. It show a very ideal installation scenario. Install your antennas in a similar manner, with them pointing away from each other and as much separation as possible.

The Right Antenna

Cellular signal boosters have many different antenna options. I will quickly highlight the simple differences.

Outdoor Directional

SureCall SC-231W outdoor Yagi directional antenna
Outdoor Directional Yagi Antenna

Directional antennas are great for locations where you need a little more help reaching out to the cell tower. They have higher gain than non-directional antennas, but only have the higher gain in the direction they are aimed.

Outdoor Non-directional

SureCall SC-100-S Dual Band Outdoor Omni Short Antenna
Dual Band Outdoor Omni Short Antenna
SureCall SC-100-L Dual Band Outdoor Omni Long Antenna
Dual Band Outdoor Omni Long Antenna
SureCall SC-288W Outdoor Omnidirectional Antenna
Wide Band Outdoor Omnidirectional Antenna

Omnidirectional (or non-directional) antennas are great for when you are close to a cell tower, but may have poor coverage indoors.

Indoor Non-directional

SureCall SC-121W Wide Band Right Angle Whip Antenna
Wide Band Right Angle Whip Antenna
SureCall SC-302W Wide Band Desktop Antenna
Wide Band Desktop Antenna

Non-directional indoor antennas are usually attached directly to the cellular signal booster and radiate an even signal away from the antenna. They have lower gain than directional antennas, but they evenly dispense signal. They are usually placed in the the middle of the area where the users will be located.

Indoor Directional

SureCall SC-222W Wide Band Dome Antenna
Wide Band Dome Antenna
SureCall SC-248W Wide Band Panel Antenna
Wide Band Panel Antenna

Directional indoor antennas are usually attached to a cable that runs from the cellular signal booster. They are either placed on a wall or attached to the ceiling to radiate signal toward the area where users will be located.

 

Need Help?

If you need help figuring out what might be best for your exact situation, we are more than happy to help! Since we understand that not everyone can be an electronics engineer (like me), email us at: [email protected] describe your situation, and we would LOVE to help you design your cellular signal booster system!

When you’re ready to buy your cellular signal booster, we would LOVE to sell you what you need! Buy a cellular signal booster here in my shop.