REFLECTOR: Cell phone repeater / amp

[Reiff Lorenz]

Andy,

In the air, the problem usually is not that the phone's signal is too weak to reach a tower; it's that your phone can connect to too many towers at a time due to its altitude advantage. The aircraft cell phone ban is an FCC issue, not an FAA issue, because the possibility of jumbo-jets with 300 cell phones on board, each continuously trying to connect to 50 towers at a time as they zip across the country could overly tax the communications infrastructure.

If you leave your phone on in the air the cell phone companies' equipment can recognize the phone's overly efficient transmissions and they will temporarily disable connections to your phone so you don't crowd out other customers.

Since it is probably these airborne transmissions that are causing your network to disconnect you, a signal amplifier is unlikely to help the situation -- and it may even exacerbate the problem.

Here are some links to further reading in case I haven't bored you already:

FCC regulation:
http://law.justia.com/cfr/title47/47-2.0.1.1.2.8.27.12.html

Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft#United_States

Hope all this helps!

Reiff Lorenz
Dayton, OH
XL-RG 5% done and headed back to it's birthplace



-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Judge
Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 1:41 PM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: REFLECTOR: Cell phone repeater / amp

I bought a useless cell repeater for my house and was looking for a way to use it. I was thinking I could get a panel antennae and point it towards the ground near the firewall and put the master box near the panel. I'd have to step down the voltage to 5v 2a. Been so long, I've forgot how to do that. Step down regulator from national semiconductor or mouser I suppose...

Anyway, I'm curious if anyone has tried that. I get sporadic signal and get emails in my blackberry  and can respond to them. The next tower I get, the email or text is out. It would be pretty neat to get something like this working okay in populated areas of coverage for say AT&T. 

I'd prefer not to us android or iOS since the active sync technology they use is not efficient in the air unless I can get something like this working. 

The model I have is: 

http://www.repeaterstore.com/products/repeaterkits/wi-ex/zboost-yx-545.php

Thanks!

Andy 
N55AJ
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