telstra aerials for increased reception

I can get up to 80 kms from a tower with mine.

It will do nothing if you are nowhere near a tower. The best bet is to try it up on a hill.

It will help pick up weak signals but it will not magically give you service when there is not a tower within 100km...

Hi Jezza,

My rule of thumb( obviously changes with hills ect) is that my 6db aerial gives me an extra 30kms range away from a tower (on flat land) before I lose service.

If i was coming into a town and would only get service 30-40kms out with the aerial on my phone compared if I had the same phone on an aerial i would have service 60-70kms out.

It will vary with different phone but I have a blue tick ZTE phone and it works ok.

cheers Wilko

Yes they work and generally work well. If it is installed properly you should see a marked improvement in signal reception if not then there is something wrong with your setup.

Cheers

LeighW

Hi Jezza,
I was impressed with the aerial my nephew had fitted to his Patrol and so I decided to get a set up for myself.

I purchased a 6 or 7 DB gain aerial from Ebay, they call it a broom stick and it is 700mm long, then got a patch lead which connects from the aerial now fitted onto the bull bar to my Telstra ZTE F165 which is the blue tick rural phone, and hooked it up.

The difference is amazing. I live a fair way out of town, about 20 K and down in a valley so the signal is not good and I could not get a clean signal standing in my back yard facing the tower. The phone consistently shows all bars even when parked in the garage which is all iron and therefore should shade out the signal.

I would take the aerial back and have it tested. It should make a marked improvement.

By the way, most Phone shops, when I went asking, want about $250 for their aerials but I paid about $60 off ebay delivered and $14 for the patch lead delivered. I went one step further and also bought a Blue Tooth gadget that attaches to the sun visor and turns the phone into a hands free. I paid about $45 for that delivered. No fines now for answering that important call while traveling. All up cost is $120 instead of the $500 I was quoted to do the same job.

Regards, Bruce.

Jezza, as others have said, a good antenna does make a difference. I am also in NT (remote) and rely heavily on external antennas. I have one on the vehicle and a similar one on our van that sounds like yours. It does not add 3 bars, but it does add 1 or 2, making the difference between no comms and reasonable or marginal and pretty good.

At home, I have a 22 db Yagi up a tower about 10 metres off the ground. Now that does make a difference. Phone only - no service. Vehicle antenna - 1 bar. Yagi on tower - 3 bars and excellent internet connection - using it now.

Perhaps thereis a problemd with the antenna cable. Is it connected well at the antenna and do you have the right patch lead.

Our phones are Samsun A412 and Samsung C5220.

Norm C

They are guaranteed to work Jezza if the right one for your phone and installed and used correctly but there is a trick to seeing the effect.

Put your phone on such that it shows 1 bar then watch that is shows 1 bar for 30 seconds or so.
Plug in new antenna keeping phone in approximately the same place , you should observe no change immediatly , but if you wait for another 30 seconds or so the number of bars should increase.

Hi Jezza, you should see a significant improvement when connected to the antenna you describe.
Does the patch lead plug into the phone or does it just clip around the phone?
I had a coupler-type lead (clip-on) for my Nokia phone back in the days of CDMA, and it did absolutely nothing to improve the reception when connected to an external 6dB antenna.
I made sure that my next phone had an antenna socket to take a plug-in patch lead. My current Samsung A411 (blue-tick), with a plug-in patch lead works a treat when connected to an external 6dB antenna.
If you do have a plug-in patch lead, then you may have issues with faulty connectors on the coax lead, or the antenna is faulty.
Gerry

What brand of antenna is it ??

Although even if its a cheap brand it should still give you some sort of increase in reception..

I have a RFI 6.5db 700mm long broomstick on the bullbar and have tested it many times and if the phone is on 1 bar it will increase to 3 , 4 or full bars....phone is a Samsung 5220..and I'm using a patch lead..

I think telling you it would give an extra 3 bars of reception was silly because no one can guarantee that.
It all depends on how high the antenna is and the strength of the signal.
I was with someone who was using an antenna recently about 50 klms from the nearest tower and they were very happy with it and I intend to buy one for myself.
Im guessing you have a dud

Here is the difference of 'standard' phone - 'blue tic' phone - 'blue tick phone with extendable arial' and 'blue tick phone with 6/7 db bullbar mounted arial with patch lead .

All tests done on " Cramsie Rd" which runs between Muttaburra + Longreach QLD , 126klm tower to tower ,

Samsung A501. recception upto 10/12 klm from Longreach end , reception 6/7 klm from Muttaburra end.

Telstra T165i 'blue tick' inbuilt arial NOT extended , 15/18 klm from Longreach end and 15/18 klm from Muttaburra end.

Same phone with inbuilt arial extended , 20 /25 klm from Longreach end and 20/25 klm from Muttaburra end .

Same phone , T165i with patch lead to bullbar mounted 6/7db MobileOne arial ,, reception the TOTAL way though bar strength does vary from full [5 bars] at each end to 3 bars at the 1/2 way mark.

thanks for all the replies i will get it checked out as even with all the tampering it does nothing

Jezza77 you could have been sold a multi frequency aerial covering 825 to 2150mHz. Multi frequency aerials on NextG are terrible and give you marginal improvement. You need a ground plane independent Next G aerial only. Covers 825 to 890Mhz. With NextG only aerial you can expect up to 150% improvement over multi frequency aerial and ground plane independent. Look to companies like ZCG Scaler made in Australia aerials for quality in reception.