CDMA with Antenna

G'day NUTS,

It makes a big difference. Not much of a phone person but always used my CDMA for a regular trip but reception was patchy to non existent (probably less than 50%). Got a new phone, car kit and arial. Now get reception for 90/95% of the journey - so worth my while. But this CDMA stuff is as dear as poison.

Kind regards

You will find it very worthwhile to use a decent outside antenna. Avoid on-glass ones if you can. CDMA coverage is quite amazing. You can drive from Sydney to Broken Hill and have almost continous coverage!
We even got coverage in parts between White Cliffs, Mootawinji and Silver City Hwy!
Cheers

Hi Nuts,

Just purchased 2 Kyocera Koi's and 2 incar kits with 7db arials and installed them into our 2 4bys. Before the external arials we didn't have great reception, now we are getting reception almost everywhere in the fringe areas. Wouldn't be without them now.

Any recommendations on external antennas anyone???

We were quoted around $400 for the car kit for our Noika 6225.

CDMA is much better in our area on both land and water.

Mrs Slave

I live in Broken Hill and CDMA is the only way to go once you leave town. Without the car kit and antennae if is still very limited, about 50km out of town is all I can count on. Slip the phone into the kit I have full coverage all the way to Sydney, Mildura, Tibooburra and beyond as well as Adelaide. I even had coverage all the way on a recent trip out to White Cliffs, Wanaaring, Tib and Milparinka. We came back to town via MT Brown goldfields and the back road down to Packsaddle without losing coverage.

I have a 6385 with an 8Db gain dual band antennae. The missus is on digital and we put a 6110 into the same car kit when necessary.

Duncs

Even driving along the Melbourne - Geelong road you are better ensured of linking in. We had an account linked through the King Island tower one day, because the CDMA high gain got through

Hi guys, I have CDMA phone with Orange and I get reception in the high country in victoria and in the barmah state forest on the murray with no antenna. The only problem is that when the people travelling with you cant get any reception on telstra and optus they want to use your phone.As far as cost goes Orange had great rates for orange to orange phones sms free all over australia.

G'Day NUTS!

If you already have a CDMA phone, check out EBAY, guy in Qld can make a patch lead for most phones for $20 so no expensive car kits. Can attach any antenna you like to it. Got one for our old CDMA phone rather than buy a new one

If you want a phone and kit, stick with Kyocera, much better reception and battery life as they use the original chipset developed by the U.S. military.

Nokia CDMA have a problem with short battery life outside the holder.

Lots of info on this recently on another forum.

Hope this helps

Rolande

Thanks for all the help everyone, lots of good info in these posts! well done.

I've got the i-Mate PDA2k EVDO version. It has antenna connector on the back but cradles cost your first born and they still come chasing you for an arm. I might take your advice Rolande and just get a cable made up, then by the sounds of it, I can use the spare UHF 6.5db gain antenna I have sitting in the shed...Too easy!, only problem is ive already got two cables hanging out of this thing in the car........

I was a bit dissapointed with the coverage on this phone with CDMA, mainly in the snowy mountains, but i suppose you wont get much coverage with anything in the snowy's. But even on the drive down the coast (Canberra to Bega) coverage was not as good as GSM from Cooma over the brown mtn.

Ill try the antenna and see how we go, has got to be better than it is now, and as long as i get better coverage than a GSM phone then im happy, otherwise I might go back to the old nokia with car kit, or long piece of string and paper cups. ;)

Cheers
NUTS!