I don't know how much help an extra antenna would be. Cell phone signals are microwave and are pretty much line of sight transmissions. They are not like AM radio signals and they dont do the skywave or bounce off the stratosphere trick either.
There is a bit of follow to the curve of the earth, but it is not much.
I know one spot on a highway where there is clear reception for 1/4 mile. There is no reception at all for the 35 miles either side of that. It just happens to be where the topography allows line of sight to one tower which is a long distance away but blocks all the rest. Once you leave that 1/4 mile all the towers are below the line of sight because there is a range of hills between the highway and them.

So as a result of this line of sight signal trait you quite often can get a signal if you climb higher up a mountain or if you can get a sight line through a pass to where the towers are.

I thought it was a good article, though they obviously had to keep it pretty simple to fit the column.

Kinda, but it would help.

As long as the wire was actually connected to the antenna of the phone, the it is theoretically entering into line of site. Cell sites have patterns to their transmissions.....


Wait a minute, I am about to get way too far into this.

Synopsis: It might help, but good luck getting the long wire connected to the actual antenna.

One other thing:


Dougwalkabout recommended a Wilson Booster when we were discussing my possible trip to rural areas of Canada. It has to have a power source, but sounds like a good idea to me for in the vehicle.

BTW, the trip may be back on again......

I was going to start off with an intro post, but thought I might save someone the time of building a bottle rocket antenna launcher when it won't help.

As mentioned above, cell phones in the US and Canada run at .8 GHz or higher, which is about 1000 times the frequency of AM radio. At these frequencies, reception is almost completely line of sight, which means that a higher antenna helps, but that's not the only thing that changes. Long wire antennas won't work, the loss in the wire is too high, and "long" at .8 GHz is measured in inches. Losses in transmission lines are very high at these frequencies, so much so that even a good external cell antenna connected with 10 feet of decent quality coax probably wouldn't work much, if any, better than the phone's built in antenna. Much better to move the whole phone up in the air somehow.

The article is pretty good. Cell phones do eat up their batteries trying to connect when they can't. They don't mention exactly why you should try turning around to get a good signal - it's because your head does a decent job of blocking the signal going through it. Holding the phone straight up in the air can help. Height is good, and being in the clear is good. Trees can reduce signal.

It's also probably good to know how your phone's GPS works, if it has GPS. With some, you can use the phone to display GPS coordinates even if you don't have cell service. The map won't work, but you should already have a map. By marking out a couple of points, you could use it as a really terrible compass, too.

One thing they forgot to mention was using the lit face of your cell phone as a beacon.

If aerial searchers are in the vicinity and they have night-vision goggles, they can spot a lit face of a cell phone, a small flashlight, and other small sources of light for over a mile.

Of course, it would be pointless to wave your cell phone at the sky with no one out there looking.

Sue

Another tip - the SMS / text messaging function on a cell phone can get a message through with a fraction of the signal strength needed for a voice call.
The phone will also keep trying to send the message.

Wilson Booster? Nope, wasn't me. But who knows, they may work.

Until last year, the best way to pump out a cell signal on the fringes was an old Motorola analog flip phone. Remember those? Three watts of unapologetic ionizing radiation. And you could put it in a pillowcase to whomp bears with, probably without damaging the phone.

Wooops must have been Swamp Donkey

Actually the Motorola flips were 600 mW (.6W), the bag phones and mobiles were 3 Watts. In both cases I sure hope it was non-ionizing radiation or we're all in trouble.

Mammal-whomping? I agree, a substantial weapon...

Many thanks for the article; I must be way behind the times, as I usually don't take a cell phone to the mountains because when I first began carrying one in 2000, there wasn't any coverage, and hadn't thought to check since. That, and my cell is very heavy to pack, being a few years old. Looking at the carrier's map, it still looks like a lot of areas around me are still not covered. (Even the service where I live is rather spotty)

Would it be better to get a PLB instead? Or should I wait until I get a newer generation phone?