RV Mobile Office for Fulltiming
Cell Phone Amplifier
The most practical type of telephone connection for a full time RV'er is a cell phone. Unfortunately, cell phone coverage is not universal. Many RV parks are in areas with no cell phone towers. No device that you can put in your RV will get you a cell signal if a telephone company has not seen fit to provide a signal to your location.
However, a cell phone amplifier can help with another very common problem: weak signals. We have been in many parks in which the only way to use a cell phone is to stand outside. Even then it can require wandering around the park to find a spot with a usable signal. If you see people standing on top of picnic tables talking on cell phones, it is a good bet that the cell signals are weak in the park.
We generally want to use our cell phones inside. Not just to avoid bad weather or for greater comfort. Often when we are on the phone we need to be sitting at our computers.
On 3 August 2007 Oregon RV Satellite Service installed a cell phone amplifier system in the trailer. Since getting the amplifier system, if there is a cell signal strong enough to use a cell phone outside, we can use a cell phone inside. There was one case in which the signal was so weak outside that I could not find a spot where my cell phone would work; I went inside our trailer and got a signal strong enough to make a crystal clear call (though, in this case, I had to stand really close to the amplifier's indoor antenna).
The cell phone amplifier system consists of:
- Wilson SOHO Cell Phone Amplifier 801245
- Wilson RV Antenna 30133
- Wilson Flat Panel Indoor Antenna
Wilson Cell Phone Amplifier
The cell phone amplifier is what increases the strength of the signal received from the cell tower and feeds it to your phone, and boosts your phone's signal going back the other way. The Wilson SOHO Cell Phone Amplifier 801245 is a small blue box (which looks like an oversized blue heatsink) mounted in the back of the equipment cabinet, just under the satellite dish. It uses 120VAC household current, which is available in the equipment cabinet.
Indicator lights on the amplifier show whether the unit is on, whether there is feedback between the two antennas, and which of the two bands (800 MHz and/or 1900 MHz) it is amplifying (normally both bands).
External Antenna
The external antenna is allows the amplifier to talk to the cell towers that are in range. It is a Wilson RV Antenna 30133 mounted on the roof of the fifth wheel toward the front of the trailer. It needs to be at the opposite end of the trailer from the internal antenna to avoid feedback.
Internal Antenna
The internal antenna is how the amplifier talks to your cell phones in the trailer using the boosted signal. This antenna is a Wilson Flat Panel Indoor Antenna. It is mounted on the back wall of the trailer, aimed down the desks toward the galley.
The flat panel antenna is directional, but because the trailer is so narrow it covers the office area very well. It also boosts the signal in the area of the dinette and the forward half of the sofa. The rear half of the sofa is in the "shadow" of the equipment cabinet. If there is just about any signal outside, then our cell phones can be easily used at our desks and usually in the galley and at the dinette table.