Help with Bury system 9 <span class="highlight">phone</span> holder and hi gain <span class="highlight">antenna</span>.

I agree.... they are a nice phone charger, but I took my broomstick off yrs ago because it made zero difference to signal.

The boosters work OK if your phone is shielded from the cell transmitters and you also need to elevate your external antenna. That is if you can receive a signal by climbing up a ladder. Using the cradle allows you to get the antenna way up in the air. If you are using it in a car the external antenna is so close to the phone that any advantage of having an external antenna is negated by the loss in the cradle.

You also need a base designed for your phone, ie the capacitive antenna in the cradle matches the antenna in the phone. A universal type of cradle will not necessarily align the antennas up properly.

Cradles have their uses but you need to engineer the system correctly.

Very much what NN/PeterD said. The capacitive coupling from the cellphone antenna to the cradle is a lossy arrangement at best. The idea is that the gain by having a suitable external antenna (compared to the phone's internal one) exceeds the coupling loss. That requires proper design and placement in the cradle, which is not always the case.

And it is expected to be optimal - or at least efficient - coupling across the range of bands that are used for cellular operation. Hmmmm!

I had the correct cradle for the phone, I even took the aerial off the bull bar and climbed a tree and hung it there, no difference. A person next to me had 1 bar on an i phone, I had none on my windows phone.
Walk 30m up a small rise and BOTH phones had 2 bars ( no aerials ) and enough signal to at least send a text.

Can't help the OP as such, but in regards to above post, Cell Fi Go rings a bell as to the booster a mate has on his 4wd..... it / the booster he has most certainly works at boosting the signal (can find out exact brand if interested). A trip with him to Fraser Island last year and a recent trip from Brisbane to Portland (Victoria) via St George, Hebel, Lightning Ridge, Bourke, Cobar, Wilcannia, Wentworth, Mt Gambier to Portland sand dunes had decent signal pretty much the entire trip (many phone calls were made and received by him for business reasons in the middle of nowhere as we drove along). Walk 5 metres away from the vehicle and many times we'd have no signal on our phones at all or at best one bar of 3G (you'd be lucky to make a phone call with that signal, likely drop out straight away).... you definately notice the difference walking back to the vehicle with it boosting the signal strength on your phone. There was a few times my mate had phone calls drop out with the booster running whilst we were in the middle of nowhere, it appeared to be as the signal changed towers it was running off of, because it'd drop out and the signal strength bars on the screen drop right down, then 5 - 10 seconds later the signal strength would rise back up and you could redial and continue with your phone call. Yes much of the areas we travelled has phone signal of some degree but not always usable, we had good usable phone signal pretty much everywhere we went, and I surfed the net on my phone in the passenger seat in many places I'd normally struggle to make a simple phone call (that's not necessarily a good thing though...lol). I'm not saying i could surf the net the entire journey we did, but the majority of times I tried I could, though there were times I couldn't due to not having strong enough signal strength but had enough to make a call.
Whilst I Can't recall the price he told me the booster costs, I know it wasn't cheap, think it was around the $1000 mark from memory.

I've had a Cel Fi Go for almost 2 years now, and they are the duck's nuts for travelling, as long as you pair them with a top of range aerial. Telstra started selling them about the time I bought mine, and although I bought mine elsewhere, it is a Telstra branded unit.

Both Macca & Rumpig have described their function well, and all I'll add is they can run on 3G, 4G or Auto, and will service up to 7 devices at once, which is handy when travelling with a group, in marginal signal areas. We did an extended trip through remote WA after fitting it, and while it worked well along Nullarbor, and in parts of the Pilbara(eg Telfer Mine), it didn't work where there's no signal.

Bob

Re: Aerial....
i know with my mates 4wd he has a shortish broomstick type aerial fitted to a fold down bracket on his roof rack, the one downside to that is remembering to fold it down when for instance driving the inland tracks of Fraser Island with low hanging trees or even just parking undercover somewhere.

I have a CelFi setup at home. It uses a yagi antenna mounted on our roof which is cabled to the main unit which then transmits to another box. This box retransmits the mobile signal within the house.

We went from 1 bar to 5 (full) bars in the house.

There are other types that can be installed into a caravan or car but they only have one active unit but again can use a external antenna to receive and boost the signal.

CelFi is the only approved brand so be very cautious about the cheap units on eBay.

bury imo are crap. they have never worked. I have had more luck with strike cradles but the best and only way to get a boost is a cel fi unit. the cradle is really only good for charging your phone imo .