Custom fabricating a permanent antenna for better reception (looking for tips!)

[jdeity]

Hello All!

I'm new to the forums, and am looking for any tips or ideas that could be contributed to my current project.

I'm designing a new antenna for my sprint 650. This antenna will be plugged through the external antenna port, and feed into a custom-fabricated antenna that will go over the current antenna nub. The finished antenna will be about 3.5'' tall, and be based on the 1900MHz sprintPCS network.

The picture shows three different diagrams, the first diagram shows the wiring approach (end-fed dipole made from the FME cable), the second diagram shows a rubber ducky/walkie-talkie antenna that will be the new antenna's housing, and the third diagram shows how the FME cable will leave the treo's external antenna adapter port, and feed into a custom hole in the OEM antenna, where it will extend into the rubber ducky.

Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated! I will keep this updated with pics/thoughts through the project!

[plunker]

Not sure what you are trying to do here. I have seen boosters that mount an antenna on your car that boosts the signal to your phone. Do you need better reception in a small area or just everywhere. I'd get another carrier.

[jdeity]

I've seen those, but this phone is my business line as well as personal, so I need a boost 24/7. I could do the car thing, but I'd have to bring it inside. They do have products like that, but htat means carrying an antenna and a cable all the time. Building one just incorporates it into my phone.

I love my treo and don't want a new phone / carrier. I've been on sprint forever and honestly believe that this approach will be less time consuming and less costly than swapping phones/carriers. I'm pretty far along in teh design, just waiting on the cable to show up from ebay. At that point it's just about last second refinements, and design improvements for further structural rigidity (basically, how to best protect my fragile antenna).

Swapping carriers would be way more expensive because I'd have to pay sprint to get out of their service. Plus I could end up with the same problem wiht other carriers. Sprint is good in this area (except my house has crappy reception). This antenna will make sprint decent/good in my home, and excellent everywhere else. And it'll be cheap, way more labor/thought are needed than money. This should be less than $30, as there's nothing to buy except for a $10 antenna cord that I'll modify to make the antenna with, maybe $10 for a walkie-talkie antenna / rubber ducky to protect the antenna with, and maybe another 10 or 20 for epoxy, bonding materials, etc.

The tough part will be making it look as stock/OEM as possible.

[jdeity]

(fyi I won't be replying here, I'm dropping this page as a favorite. If anyone in the future sees this idea and is interested in how it turned out, there will be a full writeup with pictures on some of the treo specific websites, where it'll be posted under the same username)

[Stillrockin]

Why wouldn't you post it here?

[stevetaz]

Isn't this a Treo specific site? Why not here?

Oh no, what have we done?????