There are three main components, the two antennas and the signal amplifier. Mounting the amplifier and indoor antenna is pretty straight forward, it’s just a matter of finding your preferred location and then sourcing the power. How to elevate and attach the exterior antenna to the Alto is the creative part. Drawing from the solutions already done by my fellow Alto owners, I crafted my own little version.
The extendable paint pole easily solves the elevation part, but the attachment took a little more thought. I was hoping for something easy, with minimal parts to deal with. The photos show my take on the external antenna.
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| GoPro suction cup and a custom bracket hold it to the roof edge |
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| needed to handle the horizontal mount |
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| a single stainless bolt mounted through the bumper bracket |
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| embedded coupler nut threads onto the bolt |
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| the wire feeds through the small joint between the side glass and the back sidewall |
Tested it the first time at Bonnechere, and it took a one bar LTE signal and boosted it to three bars. Not a bad result, given the park is certainly not near anything. That however, is not the real test. Ookla speed testing will put hard numbers to the data speed improvement.
I use the iPhone as a hotspot, and ran an Ookla test. Without the booster, I was getting a download speed of 4.57 Mbs/sec. A second similar test yielded a speed of 5.07.
On went the booster, and the iPhone went from one to three bars of signal, but this is not the real test. The first boosted test yielded a download speed of 15.1 Mbs/sec. The next test showed 17.8. This was a huge improvement! Although the results will always vary from location to location, actually seeing the booster improve the speeds goes a long way to validating the rather hefty purchase. The other little tidbit I checked was how much power does it draw. According to the Trimetric, the load of the booster is 0.64 amp/hr. This is quite reasonable in my mind, given that it will probably not be on that much during a given day to amount to a noticeable drain on the battery.
So if one is looking to improve upon a weak cellular signal, it would seem that a Weboost, or similar amplifier could be the way to go.
Hey - So my father just purchased an Alto and I want to make sure I can get him something useful come Christmas time... I was wondering what you recommend... It can be the wireless extender which he has already expressed that he needs.. the Magnetic screen door.. anything else? and Where would you recommend I purchase said items... Thanks
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