<span class="highlight">Antenna</span> for Wireless Broadband

You can buy off Telstra a RFI multiband aerial which goes on the bull bar.

If you are away from the East Coast you wont have to worry about Optus

MY little Maxon BP3 home gateway did us right around Australia

Was far better than the USB models and only cost $36 off Fleebay.

Will go in the car if you modify the connecting cable as it runs off a 240 -12 v stepdown

In the country, where you will need an antenna, Optus uses 900mhz and Telstra uses 850Mhz.

Most antennas will be suitable for one or the other of these and while there may be antennas that suit both, they generally won't be as high gain.

If you really need wireless broadband to the point where you need an antenna there is only one answer. Get a 6db 850mhz antenna and a Telstra service.

Wayne

Been a lot of discussion on this in earlier threads, including some regarding the Aussie Little Devil antennas. Worth a search of Exploroz threads and a look at the LD website http://www.ldantennas.com.au/

Cheers

You would be flat out trying to find a ferrous metal piece large enough for the magnetic base to stick to on most vans, the drawbar or bumper isn't really high enough. I use a 5m 25mm aluminium tube with a building ant cap (300mm square gal sheet) on an angle bracket on the top to take the magnetic base. The post is mounted on the rear bumper of the van with a tube and clamp bolt when camped. works well in marginal areas.

WE have used a Telstra antennae (about 1.2m long - they sell em) on the van A frame into our old Maxon BP3 modem,, for 3 years around oz except WA and Tassie to date

I have a 25 mm square camping tent pole attached to the A frame with a standard screw on clamp (the one that clamps the squae tube to A frame)

the tip of the antennae is just above the van,,, only once about 20km east of Uluru (parked behind sand dunes) have I had to rasie it higher

others are amazed at the places we get wireless broadband,,, at quite reasonable speeds too

antennae cost about $150 SA recently,, I just bought another for mobile phone and will mount on bullbar,,,

RFI brand CD2195 6.5db gain and cover 3G850 and GSM900 networks,,

you could ring around or google

hope this helps

cheers Barry

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don't forget to make the relevant aerial hack on the inside of the box...

Probably the first time it falls over, the internal aerial breaks free of the glue holding it and it falls and/or sits askew in the box....
Problem is unless the aerial is set very perpenditcular to the sky the reception gets very very lousy...

this is for the Telstra Elite Home Network Gateway Modem/Router/Printerserver/USB with the 4 ports & wireless - you know, the newish one that stands up, but it falls over so easy I call it "humpty-dumpty"...

For that model the main and aux aerial processing chip is split in some manner... The aux aerial is only capable of yielding 50% of the available signal IF the chip detects signal on it first, otherwise it contributes nothing... this is or something and another...

When I first got the new modem it had lousy reception, so i got the aerial, it still had lousy reception, so i searched whirlpool and up came the aerial hack - youll have to find the thread for your model yourself, use the initials of the modem's name to find stuff....

It is now excellent..

i shaved 20ms of my ping to the GAservers, ping now averages 39ms

best sigs are
Strength: -42 (dBm)
Quality(Ec/Io) -2.0 dB
Received Signal Code Power(RSCP) -56 dBm

fastest download has been 921KB/Second and that was a rural tower...

BUT i havnt setup in a CDB yet... who knows, i may just get 4-5 MB/Second and shave another 20ms off the ping...