Re: [A/S] Cell Phone Antenna

["Frank M. 'Mitch' Hill" <fmhill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You bring up a very good subject.  Operating a cell phone inside a 
Airstream trailer is not going to be very effective as the aluminum shell 
acts as a RF shield meaning that most of the transmitted signal is going to 
stay inside the trailer.
Granted some signal will leak out the windows, if you have a window between 
your position in the trailer and the cell phone tower site, the cell phone 
can work,
but if you talk while moving around in the trailer, you can expect to have 
trouble.

The use of an external cell phone antenna is a excellent 
solution.  However, if you use a window mount type of antenna, while being 
a simple solution, will
be affected by any aluminum part of the trailer behind it.  The trailer 
will block
or "shadow" the signal if the trailer body is between the cell site 
location and
the antenna location on the trailer.

The best type of cell phone antenna mounting on a Airstream trailer is as 
high as possible, preferably on the roof.  There are cell phone antennas 
that can be mounted mechanically rather than use a "thru the glass" type.

My personal choice is close to or on the refrigerator vent cover. It is a 
simple process to drop the cell phone antenna cable down the refrigerator 
vent and  fish the cable out through the fresh air intake low behind the 
refrigerator. On my '64 Ambassador this is right at the bottom end of the 
cabinet along the trailer wall.  Using the outside access door to the back 
of the refrigerator, you can route the cable and tie it to something in the 
vent space, mine happens to have a LPG gas line going up to the gas lamp on 
the end of the roof locker in the main living area. This gas line is a good 
choice to ty-rap the cable, keeping the cable from flopping around in the 
space.

This type of external antenna mounting will allow you to achieve maximum 
utilization of your cell phone while inside the trailer.

IF you or anyone else on the list would like to discuss questions regarding 
this subject I am in the process of changing e-mail addresses.  Please 
contact me as afa1hn@netscape.net...

TNX, 73, Mitch - WA1YKN
'64 AS Ambassador International