It's been months in the making, but finally we've closed on our old city home today, and have moved our lives out onto this marginal piece of land. 17.5 acres, half wooded half pasture, that we hope to slowly transform into our own permaculture paradise. 43 chickens came with the sale, and we're getting more eggs than we can handle, so we're donating to a local food pantry. Working on starting a blog to record our successes and failures. So far, failure number one was having to make 12 trips back and forth from the old and new house to transport our belongings, 60 miles each way....but we're finally passed that hurdle! The next step is in figuring out how to adjust this Wilson brand cellular antenna so that we can keep you all updated with our goings-on!
Congrats. I hope to do the same by the end of October.
Fortunately, my move is 6 miles each way. I did the hard part of that when I sold my house and moved into this temporary dinky apartment. That drive (which I did about a dozen times) was about 4 hours each way.
I'm still fighting the ISP war. I THINK I will get cable Monday. But they have screwed things up a couple times already. My fallback would be cellular-based too. Ick. At least until 5g is out for real.
So far we've got spotty connection through most of the house, but I've yet to properly adjust the antenna. I'll likely get to it tomorrow evening, but I'm not looking forward to going up on the roof again!
looks real nice and a fantastic looking chicken coop too. I wish I understood more about Wilsons offerings, I suffered from information overload when going through their offerings, not having a phd in electronics or anything like that a lot of it is greek to me. I get one bar every now and then intermittantly and never know when it will come sometimes only for a minute or 2. ive been on hughsnet but might just switch over to via sat.
I wish you good luck and long healthy life on your new place
Don't be too envious of the driveway- beyond the photo it's a 9-10% grade drop for 600 feet. I've already blown a hole in a tire too big for patching!
As a two-day owner I'm happy to recommend a Wilson Booster. We started off with a bar or two of cell service that would be very intermittent and pretty much non-existent within the house. The Wilson set arrived in a single box about one foot by two feet in size. The instructions are pretty straightforward, and you don't need to understand what it is that you're doing to follow them.
I use a free app called OpenSignal that can point to your closest cellphone tower. I used a rooftop exhaust vent from my bathroom to attach the paddle-shaped antenna and ran the cord down to a window on the far side of the house where it will be well-hidden. That cord screws into the booster unit, which plugs into a wall outlet. From the booster, an in-house antenna is run to wherever you need signal the most. Just plug in the booster and you're done- no software to set up or configure.
We get one to three bars throughout the house now with very few "dead" spots. I want to go back up and adjust the antenna a bit though, there might be even better signal to be had, since the antenna is directional and a small adjustment to where it points can make a significant difference in the signal it receives.
Ouch, yeah, my drive is mostly level(ish) aside from the potholes and ruts. The torrential rains are the real problem.
Good info on the booster. If Spectrum doesn't work out, or p*** me off enough that I tell them to take a hike through my wetlands, I may need a booster. Cellular is marginal, but does seem ok, barely. Won't really know until I am in the house and out there 24/7 for a while. Certainly better out there than in this apartment that is zero bars most of the time with 1 or 2 just enough to drive me nuts when a call tries to get through.
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