Spring foliage has a LOT to do with it.  Get leaves that have some dew on
them, and it is like a brick wall.

"dlhusk" <dlhusk@mchsi.com> wrote in news:1148303143.735059.286950
@j55g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

As the carriers install new minicells, to maximize profits per square
mile in urban areas (more connections in a smaller area), the old cells
overlap the little cell's coverage area.  Anyone using a phone in the
overlap area causes a busy channel that can only be sold to him, so the
solution is to lower the antennas down the old tall tower (probably the
one that was servicing your phone at home) and tilt the antenna panels
more towards the ground to REDUCE the coverage area of the older cell so
it can't hear stations in the coverage area of the new minicell.  The
more tiny cells the company can erect in a square mile that don't
overlap, the more airtime minutes there are in that square mile available
to more users.  This sounds great as long as you are INSIDE this
saturated area.  But, alas, if you are NOT in an area so saturated, and
the cell you were using from home has just lost its antenna pointing in
your direction, you get screwed until the company gets enough complaints
to erect a new minicell in the poor coverage area.  It's a growing pain
we all experience from time to time.

The cell servicing my home is about 6 airline miles away with no
minicells in the intense forest between us.  When the antennas were 400'
high with their panels pointed outward, I had half-scale signals and
never a dropped call no matter where I was.  Now, the antennas are down
to about 70' on the 400' tower and the panels are tilted towards the
ground about 15 degrees.  My signal is -95 to -105 dbm on a V60i test
page, which sucks.  If you carry the phone around the house in your
pocket, it rings incoming calls infrequently, beeping voicemails on the
failed calls later on when the signal comes up.  So, having no choice, I
was forced to leave the phone in a hot spot to get my calls.  That
sucked....

So, I installed a cellphone repeater into the home:
http://cellantenna.com/repeater/cae50.htm
This solves the problem, once and for all.  I'm using an 11 element DB
Products paging antenna up 50' on my ham radio tower pointed to the cell.  
A friend owns a paging business and had the antenna laying around, but
the beams cellantenna.com has are very adequate.  The box antenna is
actually on the ceiling of a closet near the middle of the home, out of
sight and mind.  All 800 and 1900 Mhz cellphone signals are now full
scale anywhere in the house, including, but not limited to, Alltel's.  
Anyone visiting on the two bands from other carriers also get full
signals as their towers are easily in the beamwidth of the big antenna so
high up the tower.  Nextel visitors are outside my repeater's bandwidth
but they work "ok" here.  I spent around $500 to install it myself.  It's
pretty much plug and play once you get the coax cable pulled in.  The
repeater is in the top of the closet and plugged into a new outlet I
installed for it.

My neighbors also report signals from VZW, Sprint and Suncom all went up
from its installation.  The repeater is analog, so it doesn't care how
many use it, until its RF amps are saturated, which I haven't seen.  It
doesn't have as much range as my wifi router, also mounted in the closet.  
Go figure...(c;