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ThomasM

S4GRU Member
  • Posts

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About ThomasM

  • Birthday 07/14/1950

Profile Information

  • Phones/Devices
    LG Optimus S
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Milwaukee, WI
  • Here for...
    Trolling
  • Interests
    All things radio.

ThomasM's Achievements

Member Level: iDEN *chirp*

Member Level: iDEN *chirp* (5/12)

17

Reputation

  1. Hi, Mike! For some reason, the logging feature does not work for me. It only creates zero byte data files. Unfortunately, I jumped ship awhile back and am now on Verizon which as we know does not transmit location info. But it would be nice to have a log of BSID's or at least something... I did notice that the app now updates regularly without getting "stuck" like it did in the past.
  2. Hey Mike I have a traiterous question since it doesn't involve Sprint... A friend of mine is planning on getting one of those new Tracfone android phones which supposedly operate on Verizon's CDMA system. He spotted SignalCheck on my Sprint phone and wondered if it would work. I've heard Verizon doesn't transmit site coordinates so that probably won't work but will the rest of the app work? The phone he is looking at uses android 4.0.
  3. It's probably that huge overloaded tower on 21st and Morgan he's picking up. It looks like every cellular carrier in the world has an antenna on it!! Now, if Nextel was still around he'd have a SUPER signal at St. Luke's hospital-it was a Nextel cell site and they had a boatload of phones for use in-house.
  4. Here's another one that drove me crazy.... South 27th Street north of College. I wondered why on earth they had a site here since it is only a short distance from their site on that ugly water tower just about in the Menard's parking lot between College and Rawson. Turns out it's an IN BUILDING site at some sort of medical facility!! In their parking lot I got a -50dB signal (a real WOW) but as soon as I pulled out on to 27th street it disappeared quickly. No antennas visible on the building. I was half tempted to go inside and ask them if Sprint had a cell site in their building but they might have rolled over a gurney and put ME on it!
  5. Downtown Milwaukee is really difficult to cover. When I worked at Nextel that was an area everyone complained about even though we had about 4 sites there-on 800MHz no less!! After looking at the map of Sprint sites in downtown Milwaukee, I'd have to agree with you that it probably is "zero to one bar land".
  6. You must mean Oakwood Road-the cell tower right next to that 500' TV tower which is almost in Lake Michigan! That one has had a new base ID for some time. I wonder if it is now NV complete... I also wonder if they are going to upgrade their in-building site (which is listed as a full-power site) located at the South Shore Water Treatment Plant along Lake Michigan? That one was fun to find when I first started visiting Sprint sites. The phone said I had a super signal but there was no tower in sight! And the super signal had a very non-super coverage area.
  7. For a little poop of a tower that Sheppard Avenue tower (just north of Ryan) has a HUGE signal since the NV antennas went online. Sometimes, my phone locks on it when I am at home and I am 2 miles SOUTH of the Milwaukee County line in Racine County! Another little poopy tower on 29th and Elm Road (just NW of I-94 and the Milw-Racine county line) has experienced a HUGE increase in signal also in the past two weeks so the NV antennas/RRU's must be online!
  8. So, that "phony" location broadcast by the tower was due to some obsolete emergency response requirement, eh? I did not know that. Interestingly enough, Nextel never broadcast "phony" cell site locations but the actual tower coordinates on all three sectors. Perhaps they implemented the emergency response service after the rules changed but Sprint just left things as is. Meanwhile, I've noticed that a boatload of Milwaukee sites changed their ID's in the last week of November. So far from what I've discovered the NEW ID's are all 4 digits and broadcast the EXACT location of the tower on all sectors. In addition, my LG phone in it's built-in engineering program displays a FIVE digit base ID. The first four digits agree with SignalCheck and the fifth digit seems to identify the sector. Some are 1,2, and 3. Some are 5, 6, and 7. You never know because there seems to be no rhyme or reason for that fifth digit!
  9. Hey Mike, when you are tired of pulling your hair out trying to get all these phones and SIM's figured out, why not go back into the code and program in logging so I can keep all that valuable SignalCheck info around to peruse over and over?
  10. The other day I was visiting a friend of mine and we were doing some work in his basement where the Sprint signal is non-existant so my phone went into roam mode. I still had Signal Check loaded from my drive there where I was watching it and it said Carrier: US Cellular. How does Signal Check KNOW the NAME of the roaming carrier? Does it go to the internet and look it up in some database using the SID returned from the site? PS: After seeing the warning in the new version I finally gave in and enabled network/WI-FI location and now the site addresses update every time-although I got a chuckle out of one that said "unknown street address" followed by the city name!
  11. I don't know about CDMA but when I worked at Nextel I had all kinds of fun editing the equivalent of a PRL only in this case it was a frequency list the phone used to scan for a signal when it was turned on. I could regularly "fool" the phone and connect to sites 15-20 miles away and even make calls on them!! This, of course, was iDEN 800 and Nextel had much higher (and better) sites than Sprint seems to.....
  12. After the last update I noticed that the street address data was missing when I went into an area not visited before. Addresses that were already in the database on the phone appeared. Instead, it said "click for map". Has anyone else noticed this? I deleted the apps data and then reset all of my preferences and the street address began appearing again. Very strange!
  13. That's probably because Sprint OWNS Virgin Mobile....
  14. A good example of this is DirecTV. When they started out, the customer had to buy everything themselves-the box, the dish, everything. If it broke down, the customer could buy a new one or return it to the manufacturer for their warranty service. But then DirecTV decided this irritated customers too much so they went to a leasing model where ALL the boxes were leased and, of course, had to be returned if the service was canceled. For a $20 S & H fee, they replace a failed box which is MUCH CHEAPER than having to buy a new one or with today's shipping costs send it to a manufacturer. Of course, a satellite (or cable) box isn't like a cellphone. You don't often hear of a satellite box being dropped in a toilet!
  15. No they don't. They use the same TRANSMITTER (which is why you can't blab on the phone and exchange 3G data at the same time) but they use two different receivers. I have an app on my phone known as Juice Defender that SHUTS OFF the EV-DO receiver most of the time and then turns it on once an hour for 5 minutes to let the assorted apps sync up. This saves a LOAD of battery juice just like the name of the app alludes. PS: When Juice Defender shuts off the EV-DO receiver your app says no EV-DO!
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