Anyone using Cel-Fi on their boat?

[ranmar850]

I've parted with a fair lump of cash to get a Cel-Fi signal booster which will work across my boat, my ute, and the camper. I bought the "Truckers edge" kit, which consists of the Cel-fi booster, Blackhawk bar-mounted aerial, and little paddle aerial for re-transmit. For the boat, I added a 2.4m ZCG aerial on swivel base, and another paddle aerial. The camper gets a panel re-tranmitter, which has a larger re-transmit radius, and will get it's signal from the large yagi aerial I already had, used when you are setting up in the same place for a while. So the idea is I only have to unscrew the aerial plugs and unplug the power when moving from car/boat/camper.

I haven't had a chance to try it on the boat yet, but trips down to Perth through a lot of stretches of generally poor reception show 5 bars on the phone almost continously, so that's a win. On the boat, I need reception up to around 50 nm from the nearest tower, across water for the biggest trip I currently do.. Others report you can get enough reception at this place to be useful.
Anyone else using them on the water?

[fisho64]

Anyone else using them on the water?

ive set a few of them up on the tugs I work on up north, is it working ok still?

[ranmar850]

Sorry for the late reply, just back from a month away. Yes, it worked quite well for the first rip I had planned. We were a long way from the nearest cell, and usually had an islane or two between us and the cell. But it enabled us to see the very big, very unseasonal tropical low that was approaching, and we were able to get out on a glass calm for the long trip back to the mainland..
I had it installed in the camper for the month away we had--hooked up to a Yagi, and pointed at a cell which was 100km away with some very rugged terrain in the middle, and it was pretty good. It was amusing to see people pull up nearby, and set up camp, and start exclaiming about how good the phone reception was. . It was re-transmitting through the larger Blackhawk aerial instead of the little poaddles you put in your boat or car. I set the whole thing up so I only have to undo the aerial connections and unlpug the cigarette lighter power to move between boat, camper, and ute, the other aerials are permanently installed in each installation.