Saturday, 10 March
Forecasters were calling for a cooler, but sunny weekend — as compared to the 70F (21C) days we had during the work week. Sunday promised warmer temps and more sunshine, so our plan was to do chores today and go on a campground recon outing tomorrow. By noon, however, Mui could no longer stand being inside, and the daily neighborhood walk just wasn’t going to scratch his ‘gotta get out’ itch. So, he suggested we move up our recon trip and plan something else for tomorrow. And that’s what we did. By 1:30p, we were on the road to Raymond R. “Andy” Guest Jr. Shenandoah River State Park near Bentonville, Virginia.
An easy 133-mile (213 km) round-trip drive to Shenandoah River State Park.
We had an ulterior motive for this trip. We first learned about this state park from Heyduke’s blog and put it on our list of places to stay. But the nearly two-hour drive to get there in the Phaeton made it less attractive as a weekend destination. If we were going to stay there before we retired, we’d both need to use vacation time or be able to work from home while there. My pre-retirement vacation days for this year are already spoken for, so that was out. There’s no internet or cell signal at the park (verified by Heyduke and the park staff), so that was out, too. Or was it? After all, isn’t that why we installed the Wilson antennas?
A pleasant drive on a pleasant spring-like day took us to the park, and specifically to the nearly-deserted 32-site campground (W/E; sewer dump available). We parked in one of the sites and turned on the cell phones. Zip, nada, nothing. Then we powered up the Wilson set up in the toad. Success. Cell signal fluctuated between one and four bars, and was pretty steady at three bars. Quite good considering we started with no bars. We managed to exchange emails (I had my laptop with me) and browse some websites.
With that success, we returned home, got on the Reserve America website and booked a long weekend for early May. This campground does not allow site-specific reservations, but we know from our recon that any site will work for us — though we would prefer to be in the upper section of the campground.
We both had our cameras with us, but neglected to take pictures. We’ll take care of the oversight when we’re there in May. In the meantime, Heyduke has a few pics in the post I linked above.
We still don’t expect 100% signal coverage with our Wilson system, but it’s nice to see that it worked in this park where we knew there was no signal to begin with.
Tomorrow we will go on another recon trip; stay tuned for our trip report.
So glad it's working! I'm anxious to try ours in another place to see how it works without being hiked up so high :)
ReplyDeleteglad to hear your system is up and working!..heck..three bars is better than a whole lotta nothin'~~
ReplyDeleteWell I think I'm lost. I thought the Wilson was to amplify your laptop signal. So do you have to plug the antenna into your phone to have it amplify from nothing to a pretty stead 3 bars. That is pretty terrific.
ReplyDeleteGreat that you found a place so close where you can remain connected. Productive outing.
ReplyDeleteThanks go to "HeyDuke" which is, BTW, an adorable screen name.
We say this often, "Hey Duke, stop pulling the stuffing out of your bunny, you little monster. Hey Duke, quit rolled on that decayed lizard, EWW. Hey Duke, you are peeing on my BOOT!" etc...
Glad to hear Wilson is doing his job, and you don't even have to hang over the back fence to communicate!
ReplyDeleteTo answer Sherry's question ... no plugging of antennas involved. The Wilson antenna will boost any cell signal ... phone or aircard. The way it works is that the cell source (phone or aircard) needs to be no more than two feet from the internal antenna, which receives the amplified signal from the roof-mount antenna. Our aircard will be plugged into the router to create our wi-fi; the router with the aircard plugged in will be right next to the router, thus we won't have to worry about distance from laptop to the internal antenna. By the way, this antenna system won't do anything to boost the campground's wi-fi network (if there is one).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review on your real life test of the Wilson system. Now we feel confident it will work for us too, if I can get the courage up to drill holes in my roof! ;c)
ReplyDeleteThe only place my Wilson hasn't worked for me is on the Outer Banks of NC at Pea Island NWR.
ReplyDeleteLife is so much better on the road when there is great internet connectivity isn't it?
ReplyDelete