Huawei 3 dongle booster ariel?

Sy-Revolution

Sy-Revolution

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Hi Folks,
I have a 3 broadband USB dongle (huawei 160g) and in the two places that I need to use it, at home (central Cambridge!) and the boat (Pin Mill, Ipswich) I can't get a signal. I've been looking at one of these booster ariels to see if that would help:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/11dBi-External-Ant...%3A1|240%3A1318

Thing is we're off on our travels and to begin a livaboard life at the end of June this year so I don't want to spend the money unless it may help whilst traveling down the French/Spanish/Portugese coasts.

Does anyone have a booster ariel for this type of connection and if so does it work? I know that the cost of connection shoots up once out of 3 coverage areas, so is there a cheaper/more reliable system to use? How good/free is wifi these days?

Any ideas?
 
If you can unlock your dongle, you will be able to use a Yoigo PAYG sim in Spain, & WIND & TIM PAYG sims in Italy. France and Portugat dont seem to have cheap PAYG data yet. I think you can use your 3 contract in Italy at Home rates.
 
I never used the 160, but I did use the 220, and also a few other USB dongles.
And none of them have a connection for an external aerial, so you can neither fit the one you linked nor any other.
The only 3G portable terminals accepting an external aerial - afaik - are those in PC card format (or Express Card if you have a Mac).
 
I've asked the question of the seller - they say they will get back to me in 3 working days.

I understand there is an aerial available for the E220 which attaches by a velcro wrap if I understand it correctly.
 
Yes, the aerials do improve the performance of your Mobile Broadband. I get a significant improvement with a small aerial clipped to the top of my laptop screen. Your 160g should have a small covered socket in the side to connect the aerial to. Picture here . You will probably need a pig tail connector to join the aerial to the dongle.

If it is an old version you might need a wrap around aerial such as this . I use this link as an example only.

If you want to unlock your dongle, I did mine with this site
 
If you have a dongle get it unlocked you can then use local sim cards for the country you are in. Ours is a 3.co.uk bought from e-bay. certainly works OK in Portugal with a local Vodafone sim. We do not have a booster but have been told coverage is the same as mobile phones so you do have to do a bit of research regarding coverage
 
Thanks for the replies, my dongle does indeed have the small ariel connector on the side. Turtleback, I have seen your type of ariel online, it's cheaper than the one on ebay and unlike that one doesn't say it's limited to 3 only. As you seem to recommend them I might give one a try.......
 
If its just a USB dongle - I just use a USB extension cable - means I can raise the dongle 3+m (FWIW I've found 3m has been fine - the 5m+ USB cables with a bootser get a bit more dodgy)

If this will work for you - it will always be a better solution as you are not trying to pass the raw signal down the aerial cable with all the associated noise issues - but instead the signal is being processed at the dongle which is now 3m away from your PC
 
Yep, I did exactly the same. Was the difference between being unuseable and getting enough of a signal be a decent connection.

Trev
 
I set up a 220 recently for a friend. It came with two leads the short one was as I expected, USB at one end, mini USB at the other. The second, longer lead, was around 0.5m long and had two USB plugs at the Laptop end and one mini USB at the other. The longer one seemed to work better, even in the same place.
Allan
 
The Vodafone sim was PAYG cost was 10euro, not sure what the limit was but it certainly lasted the 10 days we were in Portugal over Christmas. I only went for Vodafone because it was the shortest queue in the shopping centre, may well be cheaper deals but pre Christmas shopping in the Algarve is a sport I dont enjoy /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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