[DMahalko]

So I bought the Cellphone-mate kit at $650 this last Monday to test this out, with the dual-band cell yagi mounted on top of the house just below the TV antenna rotator.

Right up next to the amplifier (1-6 feet) I get 100% bars on the AllTel cell phone.


However, the main reason for getting a repeater is for high-speed Internet via EVDO, and the download speed is all over the place, spiking up to 500kbit (rarely) but also dropping to zero for seconds at a time, or the phone gives up on using EVDO and falls back to 1x speed until I hang up and try for EVDO again. For steady-state downloading of a large file, the transfer speed is totally unreliable.

It is possible that 100% bars from the repeater may be apparently meaningless. It could be amplifying random noise to 100% signal for all I know. I don't know what exactly the phone uses to determine the bar graph signal strength.

If the repeater gets no signal or a weak frequent-dropout signal, will I still see max reception bars on the phone anyway right next to it?


Is it possible to rent/borrow an official cellular signal test meter/tool? This way I could unplug the Cellphone-mate repeater, plug the meter into the cable to the roof, and get a direct readout of received tower signal strength without the repeater involved.

(The Alltel phone in question does not have an exposed antenna jack, so I cannot do "test mode" on the phone with a direct-connect cable from the phone to the roof.)

[wpsantennas-joe]

Unfortunately, we do not have a tester. The phones or aircards in test mode is the only inexpensive way to test. Some trial and error with the aiming of the antenna will be needed to achieve optimum results.

[GadeTerbob]

Most cards can also be set to "evdo only" which I've found helpful in rural areas. Be sure you're aiming that yagi at the tower that provides evdo.