I have done this ...
This started about 5 years ago and was my first encounter with Jeff Halpurn. He suggested that height may help and he was correct.
Background. In our marina was limited or no reception on my original Nokia
handheld. Pager from phone company also did not work. It was suggested I try a bag phone as they are 3 watt. So I "upgraded" from an analog
handheld to an analog bag phone (Audiovox PR92 I believe - at a cost of $150 on a plan with "free" upgrades)
The bag phone would work if you held it outside the boat and about 5 feet off deck. Had to be played with to find the right position for the signal strength to be sufficient to place an outgoing call. Worked better at high tide than low. In the Bay while sailing reception was generally good.
The next year I purchased a Shakespeare 4801 marine cell antenna (2 foot). Was $189 CDN and had to be special ordered. Then another $100 worth of cable and fittings were needed. The results was 100% usability of the cell in our marina using the bag phone. As we were weekend livaboards this was very nice. We had the only reliable phone in our marina.
Last year I finally decided that a
handheld is more useful in the city and was tired of constantly having the provider switch my phones back and forth. We were now staying in a cottage (a small cottage is as roomy as a 50 foot sailboat!). I upgraded to a Samsung X426 GSM phone which has a diagnostic jack that can be used for an external antenna. Bought the adaptors, etc ...
The external antenna idea worked poorly in the car but was a bit better than the internal phone antenna. On the boat neither the bag phone nor the GSM phone would work (I suspect corrosion somewhere in the cabling). Result was no cell reception on the boat.
The GSM phones work great in areas of GSM coverage but their analog reception is pretty limited. In rural areas with no GSM coverage it seems that the technology has taken a step backwards. I actually sent the first phone back because it dropped calls, etc... I was used to my bag phone!
The simple answer is YES a marine cell antenna at masthead improves reception in marginal areas. Get a 3 watt bag phone and forget the gimmiky
handhelds in this case.
One of my projects this year is to remove the marine cell antenna from the forest at mast head. It is no longer used - but was very useful for 3 years. The project was $450 upgrade from
handheld to bag phone and antenna - on an account that normally does free upgrades...
I still maintain that the best cell phones are the three watt monsters and that all
handhelds are junk - but in the digital world the coverage of analog is going away making the bag phone less and less useful. Also one cell company finally put a tower in our area - hopefully the provider I use will soon follow suit.
That is my rant
Mike
on
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