Cheap 4G antennas

Dan Jaman

I realised that 3 are using the 800MHz section of the old UHF telly band in rural areas, and confirmed this by data from the Comreg cell site. I discovered a seller in Germany who was flogging off New Old Stock UHF TV antennas for a tenner each and grabbed a couple. These older antennas cover the old band portion which is now 4G, of course.
When the antennas arrived, I found the seller had sent me a pair of the later antennas, which supposedly don't do too well on the 4G portion.
I thought, "The hell with it, give it a try, and if it needs it, I can alter the spacings to suit."

Stuck them up on a 40ft pole, pointed at my nearest 4G cell tower and hey-presto...



Not bad for twenty quid, and 15km of fields, trees in full leaf and wet, and a small hillock or two in the way.

ED E

Be interested to know what kinda RSSI/RSRP values you're getting. Its possible you might get over 100Mb if you test at the right time (like 4AM on a tuesday).

FanadMan

Any links in case he still has any left or have you bought them all and are now selling them?

Dan Jaman

ED E wrote: »

Be interested to know what kinda RSSI/RSRP values you're getting. Its possible you might get over 100Mb if you test at the right time (like 4AM on a tuesday).

The B315s is a bit sparse on information with the software supplied by 3, but I have a B593 as a standby which might supply more info. That download was done at 6.30am btw, so it's not getting much quieter than that.

FanadMan wrote: »

Any links in case he still has any left or have you bought them all and are now selling them?

I've had a look at his current stock and he seems to have sold out of the ones he was offering, which is why he probably sent me the 'wrong' ones, thinking he was doing me a favour :eek:
Anyway, this is his nearest offering to the ones I got, but not quite the same gain; iirc, the ones I got were a reputed 14db and 11 elements, so even though there's a bit of a mismatch and it definitely strays from optimum, there's enough to do the job.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antenne-DVB-T-TV-Digital-16-21-69-12dB-passiv-/400394376778?hash=item5d395d564a:g:2O8AAOSwL9hZjZbL

Oh; you also need a pair of these...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cable-RG316-6inch-F-TV-female-bulkhead-to-SMA-male-plug-RF-Pigtail-Jumper-/222305066287?hash=item33c26a1d2f:g:wGAAAOSwAnJZdZJy

philstar

do those antennas work with the dongles??

ordered these on ebay

FanadMan

philstar wrote:

do those antennas work with the dongles??

Hope so cos am going to order one shortly

ED E

Dongles are pretty much unilaterally junk. Get a proper LTE/3G modem.

Dan Jaman

As expected, the speed increased with the leaves falling off, however the upload speed has been pretty crap this past week.


This was near 3a.m. On Saturday at teatime I was gettting 45Mbps, which was only reached in the a.m. hours before.