The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Liked the photos a lot.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2DvytEv5eo/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

I spent a couple of nights at Alabama Hills last week. No crowds, and perfect weather. There sure isn’t much snow on the eastern slope, and nothing visible on the Inyo’s or White’s. Great for exploring in January but not so good for our water supply. Dog picture for the heck of it.

 

Some not great news out of the south end of the 395...

6 bodies are found at a remote Mojave Desert crossroads : NPR

6 people found dead in San Bernardino County desert (youtube.com)

 

I miss old Huell.

 

Cartels?

 

I saw a release from our Sheriff’s Dept. El Mirage is a riding/off road area and part of the high desert in San Bernardino County. Our Sheriff has talked about the growing cartel problem in the high desert. SB is the biggest county in the lower 48 and has a lot of remote back country. Unfortunately, it’s being used more and more for pot grows and other criminal nonsense.
This thing looks like the opening scene in No Country for Old Men. Not good.

 

Found California Gold with Huell on YouTube.
Thank you

 

Just another day in Afghanistan.

 

We left them C-17s as well?

 

Hey, do any of you guys who spend time in the Eastern Sierra (or DV or Mojave) use AT&T mobile and have a WeBoost? I don’t want to get into an AT&T vs Verizon vs whatever discussion (or an unplug and enjoy nature discussion either ). I’ve generally found AT&T to be good out there and I’ve had it for years and don’t plan to change carriers. But I’m starting to go down the rabbit hole of looking for better connectivity, and was wondering about WeBoost. Cheaper and way less power consumption than Starlink, and since I often have one flaky bar of signal out there, WeBoost along with a hotspot to get shareable WiFi in the vicinity of the vehicle might be enough. I did a quick search but haven’t found much.

 

Another option is the Garmin inReach. I can text through the inReach where I cannot connect on my cell. And the SOS option is a plus.

 

I have an InReach mini with a basic text + of course SOS capability. But real internet access for entertainment, road conditions/weather etc or WiFi calling is my goal.

 

Not an answer to your question, though I'm also very interested in the answer to that, since I do know there's reasonable AT&T signal out that way, so a WeBoost could be really nice. Just some first-hand info on desert connectivity, that we all simultaneously seek and run from .

I was recently on a trip with @Speedytech7 to the Mojave, and his T-Mobile was almost always at multiple bars of speedy 5G, while my Verizon was rarely accessible. I converted at some point to Verizon b/c of the reputation (I previously had AT&T) but I think T-Mobile is becoming dominant even in rural areas now. They've really been investing a lot in their infra.

 

All things considered, while more expensive, StarLink might be a better choice if you absolutely must have telephony and Internet. WeBoost only boosts signal so if there's one bar, the boost is minimal and while that may work for cellular it may not work so well with the hotspot for networking. You can pause StarLink but idk if you can pause WeBoost. A warning on pausing StarLink, you might not get back on so quickly if you do pause service.

Short answer, if you must have reliability, StarLink.

 

I have ATT service on my iPhone 14 and there are plenty of areas in the eastern Sierra where I have zero service. Most of DV is a black hole and even a weBoost won't fix that.

 

My limited understanding of WeBoost is that it is literally just a signal repeater, and thus susceptible to self interference and depends on the installation to prevent that. The outdoor antenna is placed on the ground plane of the metal vehicle roof with the indoor antenna living underneath that ground plane and thus isolated from the outdoor antenna. The device has a LED indicator to help in locating the units such that they don’t interfere. It can’t work unless your installation meets that requirement.

Its primary improvement would be removing the attenuation of a phone being inside a vehicle - which can be very significant - by placing an antenna on the roof of the vehicle instead. That means the improvement won’t be much compared with just getting outside of the vehicle and standing up when using the phone. Or, similarly, turning the phone into a hotspot and locating it as high as possible in camp while connecting through a tablet or computer. I see this in some of my camps where there is no signal in the cab of the truck but once up in the top of my Flip-Pac there is very usable signal with decent data rates.

A quick survey of reviews appears to show the primary improvement, if any, comes from folks who use it while driving - that is, using it to remove the signal attenuation of being inside the vehicle.

In theory it should have a better antenna and RF front end and thus potentially improve things compared to a bare phone outdoors. That improvement is going to depend on the phone of course, but for the direction you care about - downloading data - that’s probably going to be in the neighborhood of 3 dB or so (a factor of 2). Data rate directly scales with improved signal to noise ratio so that means you might double your data rate. Probably not a huge improvement then when in camp. But again, there can be a much larger improvement in comparison to using your phone inside your vehicle without a booster.

So I think if your issue is poor coverage while actually driving it should improve things, but if your issue is poor coverage in camp outside the cab of your vehicle then it might not help much at all.

As others already pointed out if you are in a true dead zone it also won’t help at all.

This is all a very theoretical discussion backed up only by the product description and supplemented by reviews. I have no direct experience. That said, personally I’d be very hesitant to try this for improving camp coverage but might try it if I cared about coverage while driving.

 

Haven't used WeBoost, but we do have Starlink so the better half can work when we're on the road. I have been considering a WeBoost for a variety of reasons, although I'm not sure how I'd mount it. Starlink thoughts:

• Inefficient power-wise, because it runs off AC rather than DC. You'll want solar unless you're using it sparingly.
• Can't be used while mobile (at least not without a significant amount of modifications), and takes time to set up, connect, and take down.
• Poorly designed from a storage perspective. Maybe they'll eventually change it, but, as currently designed amd using the smallest possible container, it eats up a ton of bed space because the "tail" that comes off the dish is permanently attached rather than removable or flush when stowed.
• Expensive to buy, and you need to have a subscription to use it. Luckily, you can cancel the subscription whenever, so the lady just re-ups it when she's going to need it.
• I haven't ran a Speedtest on it, but it seems like the download/upload speeds are pretty fast. Probably not good enough to game on, but definitely good enough for work, maps, and watching movies.

 

Thank you for that

 

As others have said, WeBoost needs SOME signal to work. No bars means just that.

I conducted a WeBoost speed test near Wiley Well. Screen shots are without, then with WeBoost.