Antennas for 3g system

[Bruce and Sue]

I recently read a posting from a member re options for the above system. When we purchased our ATV late last year we had an aerial fitted to the van for the 3G system for our laptop etc. The aerial was fitted to the roof and stood above the solar panels in height, between Brisbane and Hobart I dinged it a number of times when navigating through bush camp areas. As a result I explored for options and came up with the following. We kept the original base and then added to it an fk-851 angle adjuster {made by R.F.Industries } and then fitted a cd2195 high gain antenna again made by R.F.Industries. The result is that the aerial drops to below the roofline and travels in the horizontal position. Iwill raise it manually as required. Tree problem etc fixed.

Bruce :thumbsup:

[Webby]

Hi Bruce,

I've also seen a great idea where the 3G aerial is attached to the Winegard, so whenever you need that nice high aerial for reception, you just wind up the Winegard. The 3G aerial extends from the top of the Winegard. When the Winegard is in the down position, the 3G aerial then lays flat on the roof.

I believe our Life Members, Rosco & Chris have done this to their Bushtracker. And from memory there are a couple of others in the group as well who have done this little modification.

[Bushpig]

Hi Sue

Can you provide details on how the Winegard... supports the 3g aerial?

I am just about to purchase a van which has the old CDMA aerial which I will replace with Next G type

and would love this modification.

Cheers Jack

[Webby]

Hi Jack,

I don't actually have that modification myself as my aerial pivots from the side of the van.

Perhaps one of the others who have actually done this, Rosco or CV Tripper might like to comment.

[Webby]

I have noticed a discussion on this happening in the Caravanners Forum under the heading of -

NextG Antenna on Winegard

Might be worth a read.

The Caravanners Forum can be found at http://www.caravanersforum.com

[sid fish]

Don't throw out your CDMA antenna BushPig - Telstra NextG uses the same frequency band, and your antenna will work just fine. Note that NextG is not 3G - it is really 3.5G. (3G does use a much higher frequency.)

Confused? Try the link below for more light reading!

ExploreOz discussion

As for mounting on the van, we've been in many situations where height is important (ie the higher the better), and we stick ours up 20 feet in the air on an extendable painter's pole attached to the side of the van with a couple of plastic brackets. Cable feeds inside via one of those "through the wall" fittings - you know, the plastic grommet with a weather proof cap when it's not in use.

To test how effective your antenna is when plugged into your Telstra NextG phone, try dialling *748#96 (a capital 'N' pattern on your keypad). The RSSI figure at the bottom gives the received power from the base station in dB. It's a negative number, and the lower the figure the better (ie -70 is better than -85). -125 is the worst case, and you need to get better than this or you'll have no coverage. If you see no difference when you plug in the aerial, then something's wrong (poor connection, wrong antenna, etc). Hit the "end call" button to get out of this screen. I don't know if this works with other service providers.