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KinAlberta
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# Posted: 2 Feb 2018 10:14pm - Edited by: KinAlberta
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Does anyone not rely on their smartphone at the cabin? What toys do you have?
I had an uncle that in the 1990s that said he could use his handheld shortwave to make calls while driving through the Rockies where there was no cell phone (smartphone) service. However he was an old time military communications guy, later radio station manager.
This is also interesting: goTenna
Other options?
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SE Ohio
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# Posted: 3 Feb 2018 11:33am
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Baofeng F8-HP fm walkie talkie ~$65 USD plus ham license, allows use with fm repeaters, hams, emergency responders. Long lithium battery life, can also run off AA's and AAA's. Less noise and more popular than shortwave AM units of yore.
Cell phone extender is interesting esp if one can power it easily.
SE Ohio
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Stea
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# Posted: 4 Feb 2018 07:57pm
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I use a cell signal booster at my yurt. If you can get even 1 bar of signal it will work. I went from 1 bar and very eradic service to 4 bars and 4G data.. I used a small cheap booster, yagi antenna , 10 foot post, 1-12 volt deep cycle battry, 100 watt solar panel and a charge controller. All in about $350.00.
Rather than convert the 12 volt to 120 I found that my booster actually runs on 5 volt so I used an in line converter to reduce the 12 to 5 volt. Uses very little juice and works fantastic.
You need to do your research though to get it to work you need to know where the tower is and who is the carrier, they use different frequencies. So you need to base your equipment and phones by the carrier available. Had to change all my families phones from t-mobile to att.
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KinAlberta
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# Posted: 6 Feb 2018 01:17am
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That goTenna thing here:
https://www.gotenna.com
Not sure how well it would work in a forest.
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razmichael
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# Posted: 6 Feb 2018 07:23am - Edited by: razmichael
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The GoTenna, although interesting technology, is really only suited for very specific situations. Range is very limited - "Expect up to 0.5 mi (0.8 km) point-to-point range in congested areas such as cities, mountains, ravines, thick forests, etc". The uniqueness lies in the mesh and relay capability which requires an environment of multiple users spread out in an area to provide the relay/mesh capability - "and creates a network that gets stronger the more people join it". Your cell phone provides the interface to the GoTenna unit for the text messaging (no voice).
To be honest, I cannot come up with many situations (certainly day to day users) where decent quality walkie talkies would not perform better (and cheaper). Granted this does not include text messaging and the location services but???
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