MrZorbatron

Yaesu Fusion, D-Star, and DMR are just different systems for digital communication.  I would personally suggest D-Star, but DMR is an open standard and will cost less to get into, if you are willing to deal with the additional difficulty.

Edit:  More info: http://www.mikemyers.me/blog/2016/2/19/d-star-dmr-fusion-which-is-right-for-you

What a waste of material.  A low end processor, ugly design, and a notched display.  Next!

I'll stick with my Z3, thank you.

On 2/20/2019 at 11:21 AM, Trip said:

73 de N4MJC.  I barely use my license, though.

And for the record, "ham" isn't an acronym, so you don't need to spell it out in all caps.

- Trip

THIS!  I was just going to reply with exactly this sentiment!

AC8YZ here.  Who cares about addresses?  You want to get eaten by my (or someone else's) dog, have at it.  All someone needs to do is listen to a cheap SSB shortwave radio for a few minutes and they can write down dozens of callsigns and get addresses from the FCC from there.  Plus, I would be willing to bet at least a few here (myself included) own businesses, which makes it REALLY easy to get addresses in most states.

1 minute ago, belusnecropolis said:

I spoke too soon, Band 41 was down for about 5 days at one location. It restarted again successfully when the billing cycle reset yesterday. This was on a band 41/26 device.

What's a B41/26 device?  25 is Sprints main LTE, how doesn't something g support it?

19 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

I saw the same issue in Saulte Ste Marie a couple of weeks ago and also had to disable band 41 for the phone to function. Other phones could not even see the band 41.

 

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk
 

 

My dad's GS5 won't see B41 lots of places.  My mom's GS7 acts like my Nexus 6 and 6P, and so does my brother's Motorola X4.  The Nexus 6 and X4 seem more apt to drop B41 if not getting any data through it.  Maybe the RIL is smarter.  Even when I do have unusable B41, SMS and MMS do work over it.

Incidentally, I propped my phone up on my car dashboard (recording) for a minute on my drive home home earlier today in order to show somebody how bad the rain was.

The resulting video (68 MB) took over 20 minutes to upload 23 MB of over B41in Waterford, only to fly through the rest in less than a minute as soon as it jumped to B25.

35 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Mr. Z... have you noticed any improvement?    I'm not seeing much B41 lately and I don't know why... something around here is going on... 

It's getting worse than ever.  I don't see so much lack of B41 as I see unusable B41.  -85 B41 signal that's as usable as communicating with Antarctica from Oxford using smoke signals (have to manually defeat B41), dropping calls on handoffs with good CDMA signal, transitions between LTE bands are accompanied by up to 10 seconds of "No Service", similar periods of "No Service" during handoffs between LTE sites even with good signal.  I can reproduce that behavior on the devices, and the dropped calls on four.

Still, the only responses I get from Sprint are basically "Get lost" answers.

Reference also:

In Oakland, Genessee, Livingston, Wayne, Washtenaw counties, reliability has totally gone to hell.  Like I said, I am talking about call performance.  The Sprint rep I talked to on the phone have even indicated an unusually high number of calls from MI with these issues, and I have people on Reddit corroborating my headaches.

Yes, some of my data speeds have gone up, but it doesn't really mean much to me if speeds are over 10 Mbps already.  Network reliability is essential to me.  Frequent dropped voice calls are a huge problem and hurt my business.  When one of my customers asks even in jest, if I just traded in my "cool Android phone for one of those Wal-Mart drug dealer minute phones" (exact words), there's a problem.

Anyone notice how horrifically bad service in this part of the state has become?  I mean to say it's gone to shit would be an understatement.  I'm dropping 8 or 9 calls a day on average now.  Speeds have gone into the toilet, band transitions break downloads and streamed, often even include several seconds of "no service", data services sometimes don't reestablish after a call (LTE mark returns but with x on signal bars).  CDMA is dropping on hand off all over the place.  It's making me absolutely crazy.  I have two calls in at Sprint and they can't even tell me if they are working in something around here.

My brother just got a new Motorola X 4 two months ago and he was talking to me a out sending it in under warranty because the service took a crap after 6 weeks.

This still happens if I use my old Nexus 6, my 6P, a Galaxy S7, or Galaxy S5.

I have a post with a fair bit of support on Reddit about this, as well as some minor hijacking of a post suggesting nominating John Saw for some award.

I'm watching Verizon promotions now.  I will have nothing to do with any company under the management of those who currently operate the present-day T-Mobile.  I think the company is shady, dishonest, and worse.  As a Sprint user since 2003, I hope this merger sinks.

Spectrum disorder

There are sites around me that look like they should have 6 carriers on them. I don't get it either.

What's the best way (other than physically approaching it) to determine what carriers are on what structures?

If it happens, I am going to Verizon.  T-Mobile has always been very shady in my eyes.  I have yet to see a case where their coverage matches Sprint's in a major area, regardless of maps and fanboys.  Data speeds are all fine and good, but you don't really need insane speeds to a mobile device most of the time.  10 Mbps is more than adequate, and I get much more than that on Sprint as it is.

Nexus 6P just got this update too.

Hey I am writing this from my replacement 6P, which I think is a different hardware version than my original.  Anyone want to confirm?

8 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

From my own observations, for data, it is Verizon first for coverage and consistency, then AT&T then T-Mobile. Voice wise it is Sprint in third place instead of T-Mobile.

I will generally agree with this, though in my area, T-Mobile has a lot more odd dead zones.

I rack up sometimes several thousand minutes on air per month.  I talk to someone for about an hour and a half a day on her way to and from work, and it drops on her end at least three times if she goes one way, and at least four another way.  This is right through my area, which is a very well-off place where people have nice phones, so phone companies make a lot of money.  We can start with a mile long mostly-dead zone in the middle of Oxford, continuing into the Orion Township border.  Next are two spots in Bloomfield Hills, and lastly one in Southfield.  This is ignoring countless spots with brief fading.

I can make that same drive with zero issues.  This is obviously not an exhaustive comparison, as not all networks have hardware in the same places, but it's a recurring theme around here when comparing T-Mobile and Sprint.  T-Mobile also has a lot more data outages than Sprint does.

On 9/21/2017 at 4:58 PM, red_dog007 said:

Nothing to do anything about number of customers...

How are they not on par with the big two?  TMobile is crushing it for data in all the major markets.  If TMobile can execute their 2017 coverage map goal, they will be on par with AT&T, which is considered to be in the same coverage league as VZW.  So yes, TMobile will be in this club come 2018.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/lte-comparison-map

They are on par only in their own eyes.  AT&T is not nearly on par with Verizon coverage wise, especially geographically, and even further behind in consistency of coverage (swiss cheese).  T-Mobile won't be on par with either one in the near future.  They both have more than enough money to get ahead without breaking a sweat if T-Mobile starts to get anywhere close.

Nouveau Riche

If you bought from Google, they will RMA pixel to you.

 

Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk

 Bought from Worst Buy.

My 6P took a crap.  I literally took it and my Thinkpad into a friend's restaurant's walk-in freezer and sit there for half an hour in a winter jacket in (-10 F temperature) to keep it operating in order to get my data off.

No repair or warranty replacement in sight for my $450 paperweight that broke after 7 months, despite it being in perfect exterior condition.

Huawei and Google are being sued now over this (common) malfunction.

The South-Hill Bridge (Main Street) by the Cadillac Dealer... along the Clinton River...       By the way... it's 8:35pm and the network is acting up again... I only have 1x at the house right now??   WTH??    I don't believe they would be working on towers at this hour as its getting dark....

I am guessing that you're talking about the site I was talking about earlier, the tall guyed tower north of the river, kind of between Second and the river.

Sending message with contact details. I have a couple of people at my limited disposal, both Sprint and Ericsson. They don't work for me, but have been happy to help me so far. Call or text next time. Worst case, maybe meet up for a wine or something. Wife, girlfriend, whatever invited. It's interesting to meet people from the internets to work on real world problems sometimes.

Good to know! Thanks Mr. Z! With 800 work starting on some towers, I'm hoping they put it on all the towers in the area. I'm wondering if the "Bridge Tower", as I call it, on the North End of town is the 800mHz I pick up at Home Depot?

Exactly where is this bridge site? Are you talking about the Home Depot on Avon? That place is a pit for cell service.

Quoting a post from 2012???

How the hell did I not notice that? Well, I guess that's what I get for reading online when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep.

Yeah, believe it or not, I'm not sure the site in Downtown Rochester along the Clinton River Trail is actually a Sprint site? I hope it is as it's a huge massive tower! I wonder because sometimes I can be at the Irish pub along Main... just barely a 1/4 mile away and I won't pick it up! Odd. When in town, I usually get the Tienken and Main site. At my house I get Adams and Walton (usually) ... even though the tower at Livernois, north of Hamlin is about equal, or slightly closer. The only thing I can attribute it to is the hilly terrain in the area.

 

By the way, that mini site on the pole is at Rochester College (Michigan Christian College) across from the Home Depot on Avon Road. That site looks to be about 1 month old or less.

A good friend of mine owns a restaurant there at forth and main and I noticed I get extremely strong (better than -90) LTE on 2500 when I am in his office. The office is in the back of the building and has a large window facing right toward that tower. I have actually personally examined this site and can guarantee with zero doubt that it is a Sprint site, in fact, I was one (the one or one of the ones) who submitted it here as being a conversion in progress a couple of years ago. Site ID on the electric meter is SPRINT PCS DE60XC067. If you're a sponsor, you should be able to look that up on the map. I'm on my phone now, so I can't do it easily. I guess it's possible that it's retired, but the full S4GRU map won't load without crashing my browser here.

I'm really hoping for some fast movement here. Would like to get a new Galaxy S3 sooner rather than later.

There are no new Galaxy S3s.  It's a four to five year old device.

Great model in most ways, though.  SVDO is very impressive.

I live 1 mile east of Oakland University.   Walton Blvd, Old Perch Rd, Livernois area....   time was around 5 or 6pm.   Don't remember... but it was a pain with only slow data available....   I just hope you're right, in that, they might be working on towers in the area...   My main tower I always pick up is at Adams and Walton,(1.5 miles) behind the Sprint Store.   That day however, I was on the tower much further away!  (Tienken and Rochester)?? That's about 3-4 miles from my house.   My usual back up tower (also 1.5 miles but don't easily pick up due to hills / terrain) if I even walk 1 block south of my house is on Livernois, between Avon and Hamlin in the Mini Self-storage lot.   Weird stuff going on.   

Tienken and Rochester is in the back corner of the shopping center, right where Orion Ct. comes into the parking lot from Orion Rd.  It's a really busy looking self-supporting tower, with so much stuff on it that there is cable run on the entire exterior of the structure, in addition to the cabling in the inside.  There's also a site along the south side of the Clinton River Trail that is a narrow but very tall guyed mast tower, which also mounts lots of microwave hardware.  You might actually get a better signal from this site in a lot of places that are much closer to the tower in the shopping center parking lot.

I live off of Baldwin Rd. just north of the donut at Indianwood.  My normal site is next to the Odyssey Industries factory on Indianwood, but I have been picking up the site on Oxford Rd. next to the storage complex and sort of behind the Meijer store on M24.  I have been picking up 800MHz CDMA from that site frequently over the last few months, though am grabbing 1x 1900 from there at curiously strong signal levels (between -96 and -91).  I also get the site on Seymour Lake every now and then.  Despite being less than a mile from the site on Indianwood, my signal levels from that site are pretty bad lately, almost never exceeding -95 in my house.