The View From the Outback

In short, one might conclude that all knowledge, wisdom, and wit are confined to those who inhabit New York City, Washington DC, or Hollywood.

I am now a senior citizen, in my 7th decade. My experience was gained in many cities in the U.S. and in about 30 foreign countries. That experience has included the U.S. Marines, law school, the ATF, the CIA, Fortune 500 executive, writer, public speaker, educator, editor, and publisher - for openers. Some insights come from talking with ham-radio operators in every major country and such idyllic places as the Cook Islands. For over 20 years, I have written articles off and on for various magazines and newspapers. I've had an enormous number of letters published in major national publications. The Outback is the rural area in Northeast Texas where I have lived for the past 15 years. Since most visits to my pages come from searches, I am no longer trying to keep on a regular schedule for updating the Outback.

Sunday, October 23, 2005 - and following

Click on a Topic to go directly to that topic.

• Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan
• Labor Unions Partly Responsible For Job Exodus
• Ear Wax Is Not All Bad
• Extending Cell Phone Coverage

Thoughts While Staring at the Ceiling Fan

Nov. 10, 2005: A new study reported Nov. 15 in "Circulation:Journal of the American Heart Association," suggests that in elderly patients with an HDL cholesterol level of >45 mg/dl, taking statins is of little benefit. This is but one more hint that the medical profession does not have a clue as to what causes heart disease and that all the furor over lowering LDL cholesterol in the elderly has been misplaced. In fact, as I have reported several times, higher total cholesterol in the elderly is probably of greater benefit that having low cholesterol. For decades, many doctors have felt that having a low ratio of LDL/HDL is perhaps more important than the level of LDL. The higher the HDL the better. That is, if your LDL is 100 (LDL, not total cholesterol) and your HDL is 40, your ratio is 2.50. If your LDL is 150 and your HDL is 65, your ratio is 2.31. According to the LDL/HDL-ratio theorists, the lower ratio (2.31) is better, and you would have less risk for heart disease. Or even better, you can join the many "unsung experts" at www.thincs.org who do not believe that cholesterol levels have anything to do with heart disease. I am going to keep beating this thincs.org drum until you take a couple of hours to read some of it and links to Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's work.

In the Outback for Jan. 12, 2005, I wrote an article "98,000 to 195,000 Reasons to Stay Out of The Hospital," since those are the numbers of patients estimated each year to die in hospitals from medical error, infections, medication errors, and so on. Some states are now requiring hospitals to report the number of infections and deaths due to infections. Pennsylvania in 2004 reported that 11,600 patients got infections while in the hospital - while 1,793 people died as a result of those infections. In 1973, doctors in Israel went on strike for a month, and in that time the death rate fell by 50 percent. Several years later, a two-month strike by doctors in Bogota, Columbia led to a decrease in the death rate of 35 percent. And when doctors in Los Angeles held a “go slow” campaign – to protest against the sharp rise in professional risk insurance premiums – the number of deaths fell by 18 percent. When the doctors went back to working full-time, the death rate immediately returned to its former level. Moral of story. Go to the doctor or into the hospital only as a last resort. Now, you know why dogs lick their own wounds. Their survival rates are higher.

Michael Moore is not only a slovenly fool, but he is a liar. In a new book by Peter Schweizer we find: "Michael Moore claims he grew up poor in urban, blue-collar, largely black Flint, Michigan," Mr. Schweizer notes. "Actually, he grew up nearby in the largely white, middle-class town of Davison." The author reveals that Mr. Moore's dad was not "just another working stiff," as Mr. Moore insists; rather, he put his four children through private schools, "played golf every afternoon at a private club, and retired comfortably at the age of 56."

It is tragic when any innocent person is killed, but some accidents are so bizarre that they leaving you shaking your head in disbelief. A 93-year-old Florida man struck a pedestrian with his car. He then drove several miles with the man's body on the roof of his car. Ralph Parker reached a tollbooth on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and slowed down, and the body fell through his sun roof into the front seat of his gold Chevy Malibu, the St. Petersburg Times reported. Parker told police he thought the body had fallen from the sky. This focuses on the point that there are too many impaired and elderly drivers on the road and most states don't seem to care. Elderly drivers should be retested. I am an old geezer and I got my driver's license renewed online! I happen to have very good eyesight, strength, and good reflexes. But I constantly see old geezers wandering all over the road, going up one-way streets the wrong way and running stop signs. It is a terrible blow to someone's independence to be denied the right to drive, but for the public good - and the well being of the drivers, there needs to be more retesting of elderly drivers.

Update: Nov 12, 2005. At a luncheon yesterday, I was saddened to learn that a former neighbor of mine in a nearby town had been in an automobile accident and was now confined to a nursing home. When I first met this lady about a year ago, she was in her 90s, but spry and quick witted. She baked me a small delicacy and suggested that in the future she might come to the back door so that the neighbors "would not talk about us." I said she was quick-witted. But she had no business driving a car, and she had family and friends who could shop for her and "carry her" (as they say in Texas) to the doctor, etc. Once again, there has to be a tradeoff between losing some of your independence and simply being damn foolish and driving when you are incompetent to do so.

In an earlier Outback, I commented that Brazil had a horrendous murder rate and they were responding like so many nations, take guns away from citizens, then only cops, military, and crooks will have guns. In a national referendum, 64 percent of Brazilians voted against the gun ban. Was there ever any doubt, Sarah Brady, et al.?

Corporate America would not waste so much money if it were not tax deductible as "a cost of doing business." SBC will change its name to AT&T after the merger is finally inked. Do you have any idea what it will cost to repaint the logo on trucks, on signs, toss millions of SBC letterheads and business cards in the trash, make computer network changes, and do a myriad of other things to change SBC to AT&T? Not all that long ago, we here in the Outback saw the name change from SW Bell to SBC and SW Bell Wireless to Cingular. We were finally adjusted to the changes. Now, millions of us will have to delete a payee and add AT&T to our list of online banking payees, for starters. Pick a name for god sake, and stick with it! I'd have to dig through my news archives, but I have a bad memory of AT&T. Something about an unethical business practice, as I recall. It may have been telephone slamming.

Update Oct. 27, 2005: Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. I am glad she did that. In the previous Outback, I had predicted that it would be a miracle if during the confirmation hearing she could overcome the negative image she had generated. The more I looked at the reaction to her, the word "slaughter" came to mind as what could have been expected in the Senate Judiciary hearings. We are spared that humiliating debacle. Look for a new female candidate who is probably a sitting judge (who wears very little eye makeup), or in distant second, an Hispanic male. Forget Alberto Gonzales, since it would be another case of "nominating an old friend." And forget Judge Pricilla Owen. She had to be nominated twice to get approved - and that procedure dragged on forever. Update: So, I guessed wrong. Another white guy. Did the vaunted TV pundits do any better? At least I did not waste 12 hours of your time with endless prattle about who the next nominee would be.

Modern medicine is at times a comedy of errors. A headline says that Viagra appears to reduce the effects of hormonal stress on the heart by 50 percent. The very next headline in an online news source was: "Drugs to treat erectile dysfunction need stronger warnings on their packaging about the risk of blindness." Taken together, your erectile problem might be solved, your heart may actually benefit, but you may be blind and not able to see your partner. This brings to mind the old sea-story about picking up a date in a bar when you were "blind drunk," and getting a shock when you woke up next to her in the morning. I only know about this from hearsay in the Marines, of course. Hearsay.

When will we switch completely to Digital TV? Senate bill says in early 2009. House bill says at the end of 2008. Both contain provisions for subsidies for boxes that would convert digital signals so they can viewed on old analog TV sets. There are about 21 million homes in the United States that rely solely on over-the-air broadcast television. Most households have cable or satellite services. HDTV content is sadly lacking, unless you are lucky enough to live close to an HDTV transmitter in a large city. People are hesitant to buy HDTVs, at a much higher cost than analog sets, because there is so little to watch in HiDef in many places. HDTV content providers and TV stations are dragging their feet because there are not enough people who have bought HDTV sets. The only answer, distasteful as it may seem, is a government mandate to go all digital and stop transmitting analog signals. The sooner the better, for consumers and the HDTV-content providers and TV-set makers. The NAB estimates there are about 73 million television sets that may need converter boxes (about $50 to start and less as production of converters ramp up). Lost in all the wailing about how many "old analog sets" will not be able to receive Digital TV is a fact that many analog TV sets are never used to watch TV. They are used for games, and so on. And Digital TV does not necessarily mean all stations will be in HiDef. It is a long story, but there are many Digital signals on the air now that are not HiDef. (See, for example, www.dtv.gov)

Phising and other scams are deterring many people from shopping or banking online. But just 12 percent of identity fraud cases last year occurred because the victim was online, while 63 percent happened if the target used traditional channels, according to a survey by Javelin Strategy & Research. You are safer giving your credit-card data to a reputable online site than handing it to a waiter in a restaurant, for example, where a duplicate card swipe can easily be made. Bank of America now has an individualized "token" system to help ensure that you are in fact on a legitimate BA bank site. Some credit card issuers offer to generate online one-time card numbers for a specific transaction. VISA and MasterCard have a personalized verification system, where during an online transaction, the vendor shunts you to the credit-card site. You must enter your password phrase to authenticate the use of your card. More "double identifiers," and even solid plug-in tokens will be coming to online shopping and financial services.

The new NBA dress code is causing some debate. On balance, even former great black players are in favor of the code. But there are those like Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks owner who wears a Mav's T-shirt to games) who side more with the players. I think I speak for many when I say that dressing like a hip-hop star and wearing gold chains, medallions, and diamond ear studs rubs me the wrong way. It is bad enough that these athletes are so grossly overpaid, but they do not need to rub it in by wearing gold and diamond jewelry. Charles Barkley points out that kids look up to NBA players and feel they must emulate their dress and jewelry (bling) to fit in. Every time I see an NFL player wearing a diamond ear stud during a game I grind my teeth - and wish that somebody would tear it out at the bottom of a pileup. Why do so many major-league baseball players wear heavy gold chains during a game? Aside from the statement that they are rich, I would think that the chains flopping up and down would be a distraction. When I grew up, the only men who wore earrings and gold necklaces were queers, now called gays or homosexuals. It still looks queer to me to see a man wearing an earring, ear stud, or gold necklace. Ha! I managed to use "queer" in its proper context.

Update Nov. 12, 2005: Apparently, I am not the only one offended by men wearing diamond ear studs. Before he was elected the first time, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was a hip-hop kind of guy and wore a diamond ear stud. Polling indicated that women of a certain age had a negative opinion of the ear stud. So, Mr. Kilpatrick removed his diamond stud and won election, only to replace the stud once the votes were tallied. Up for re-election, he got more heat than before about embracing the hip-hop culture and wearing his signature diamond ear stud. This time he said that he was removing the diamond stud for good and renounced his affection for hip-hop. Right on, and real cool Mr. Mayor. Over the years, I have always thought that Ed Bradley of the CBS "60 Minutes" gang was one of the best of the bunch. Then, he started wearing an earring on camera. I never felt the same admiration and affection for him after that. Enjoy your earring Ed. As an old Marine, I think it looks kind of "queer" on you.

Even though I seldom see a movie, Sandra Bullock has always been a favorite celebrity of mine - until she married Jesse James. What was she thinking? She is 40, Jesse is 35, and his great-great grandfather was a cousin of the outlaw Jesse James. If you have not seen him, Jesse James is a heavily tattooed thug who owns West Coast Choppers and has a program called "Monster Garage" on TV. He is the quintessential macho, knuckle-draggin', dumb-ass. Among his previous marriages, one was to an adult porn star. One celebrity site says this: "Sandra enjoys bubble baths and dark chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Jessie likes guns, choppers, and cars he can fix up." Pray that they don't have any children together before she comes to her senses and files for divorce. And that he never permanently disfigures her or causes brain damage if he loses his temper. Of course, the fact that Sandra Bullock married Jesse James is prima-facie evidence that she already has some brain damage.

What Are People Searching For?

Here are some recent searches that caused my Web page or Outback column to be listed as a hit:

does jorge posada pea on his hands for grip?

My only comment about Yankee Jorge Posada was : "A few players still bat barehanded, Jorge Posada of the Yanks, among them." (www.outbac83.html)

I found a website that claims Jorge pees on his hands: http://pdxsportsguys.com/scott/nod.html

It might help if the searcher had used "pee" instead of "pea" (a vegetable). For example "Jorge Posada pee." I suggest someone write Jorge and ask him the question. He is, after all, one of the few players who does not use batting gloves. Hmmm. To pee or not to pea, that is the question. Right up there in importance with "Should we have invaded Iraq?" "And what was President Bush thinking when he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court?"

Labor Unions Partly Responsible For Job Exodus

The Delphi bankruptcy filing exposed to public view some facts about unions that we do not often see in the mainstream media. Delphi was spun off from GM in 1999 and is a supplier of parts to GM and others - with 185,000 employees. Delphi has 33,000 unionized employees in the United States. The average wage appears to be $25 an hour - for factory and assembly work. Add in the costs of health-care benefits and retirements benefits and the cost of each employee to Delphi is $65.00 an hour! Just the $25 an hour comes to about $4100 a month, $49,200 a year, (and that's without any overtime pay) before benefits are added in. And you wonder why jobs go overseas?

When I was growing up, unions played a vital role in ensuring fair pay and good working conditions for employees. As decades went by, union employees were not content to live in a modest house and drive a 5-year old car. They wanted big houses, new cars, boats, motorhomes, vacation homes, and all the trappings they saw their upper-middle class managers enjoying. It did not make any difference that in large part they had limited education and limited skills. The unions kept demanding (extorting) more pay and more benefits. I will never forget my first visit to a Ford plant assembly line after WWII. One guy's job was to pound on the hubcaps with a rubber mallet, start the engine, and drive the car off the assembly line. But he belonged to the United Auto Workers (UAW) and they would make sure over the years that he got his share of the pie - and his motorhome.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost. Delphi is asking for 60% pay cuts. Delphi's bankruptcy will probably be the end of the expansive system of defined-benefit retirement packages that auto workers have become accustomed to. Those benefits were negotiated for a growing industry that is no longer growing. Employee contributions to 401(k)s will likely become the norm. This is not all bad. Increasingly, employers are finding ways to negate or reduce some of the "promised" retirement benefits. With 401(k)s, the employee has his own nest egg that he can take from job to job and no employer can take away what he has accumulated. Health care contributions by employees will have to increase. Many small firms are dropping health-care, since they could not remain in business if they assumed the burden of a health-care plan.

Union membership has been steadily declining for decades. Wal-Mart knows that a union shop in one of their stores would probably be a death sentence. They have a novel approach. Where union organizers seemed to be getting a foothold in a store, Wal-Mart closed the store. The message was clear. "Do you want a job on our terms, or would you rather join a union and have no job at all?" As much as I despise Wal-Mart overall, I have to give them an A for dealing effectively with the union situation. When the Teamsters on the West Coast went on strike, we discovered that some who work on the docks make $100,000 a year - or more. I never forgot that startling revelation.

Although is not directly related to the job exodus, Civil Service and government employee unions are no doubt in large part to blame for the inefficiencies in government. They protect incompetence. There was a big fight when Homeland Security was formed about how much influence unions would be allowed to have. Top brass argued that to become lean and mean and efficient, Homeland Security needed some latitude in hiring, firing, transfers, and work assignments that often Civil Service and government employee unions were at odds with. The battle continues. If we could do an audit of Homeland Security, which due to its size would be nearly impossible, we would no doubt find that Civil Service rules and union demands play a large part in the inability to get this monster under control. When I was a Federal agent, Treasury was under Civil Service. The FBI was not. Screw up in the FBI and you found yourself in the Fargo, N.D. office. Screw up in the Treasury agencies and you would cruise along to promotion based on seniority, not on your work performance.

Update: Nov. 12, 2005. If I understood the network news broadcast, the new GM contract with the UAW will require single (unmarried) retirees to contribute $370 per year to their health insurance. As a retired Federal employee, (which many seem to think live high on the hog) I pay about $1,560 per year for my health insurance, plus about $799 a year for Medicare. I am happy to pay these amounts for the wonderful coverage I have had through some pretty extreme medical bills. My retirement income is so modest that I will not discuss the amount, other to say that I could not afford to live in a big city. My government service included the Marines, the ATF, and CIA, all of which are eminently more dangerous than working in a vehicle assembly plant. Where did the idea start that the world owes these UAW employees benefits beyond what almost anyone else receives? It started with the extortion of the auto makers by threatening to go on strike or slow down production lines unless union demands were met. It all got out of hand over the years, to the brink of bankruptcy for the car makers. Now, we have the age-old question, "Would you rather have less benefits or no job at all?" Less benefits and lower salaries will have to prevail if the U.S. auto industry is going to be competitive and profitable. Incidentally, you can buy a pretty nice little house here in the Outback, for what a major U.S. vehicle costs today. Or a real nice mobile home. Ridiculous.

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Ear Wax Is Not All Bad

The purpose of ear wax is to repel water and to trap dust, sand particles, or small insects. It is like a personal sticky "No Pest Strip." Under normal circumstances, you should not have to clear the wax from your ears, as it is constantly flaking off and replaced by fresh wax. The wax is produced in the outer part of the ear canal. If you use Q-tips or other probes, you may simply push the wax down closer to the ear drum - and may even puncture the ear drum. Unless you have trouble hearing, there is normally little reason to try to remove ear wax. Some symptoms of excess wax buildup are; partial hearing loss, tinnitus (noises in the ear), earache, a sensation that the ear is plugged.

If you have an MP3 player, yours may have come with several spare plastic inserts for the "ear buds." If you have wax on the ear buds, this is normal. But if you notice that over time you now are listening to your favorite song at a volume level of 12, when you used to listen at a level of perhaps 7, you may have some excess wax buildup. Or, you may have been playing the music too loudly and are actually going deaf. The human inner ear was not designed to withstand being next to a jet engine, firing a gun, or listening to very loud music over a long term. If you think the heart is complex, look up data and photos on the construction of the inner ear. I tried to read about the ear in "Gray's Anatomy" and gave up. Too complicated. How a medical student can pass an exam based on "Gray's Anatomy," is beyond my comprehension, unless they cheat or there is a "Cliff Notes" for "Gray's."

If you feel you really need to clean out some ear wax, there are commercial ear-drop products that soften the wax. But, mineral oil, baby oil, or olive oil as probably as effective in softening the wax. Putting the oil in at night and plugging the ears with cotton balls will give the oil a chance to soften the wax. Or put a few drops in your ears over a period of days. Next you can use a rubber-bulb syringe to flush the ears with warm water, being careful not to squirt the water in at a high pressure. Or, you can use Hydrogen Peroxide to remove the wax (by its foaming action). After using Hydrogen Peroxide or warm water, it is a good idea to flush the ears with rubbing alcohol to dry out the moisture in the ears. Some suggest a 50/50 mixture of alcohol and white vinegar to drive out the moisture.

The "Mayo Clinic Family Health Book," which is a valuable 1400 page resource, suggests using a few drops of baby oil, mineral oil, or glycerine to soften the wax. Then, use warm water in a rubber-bulb ear syringe to flush out the softened wax. They also suggest using one eyedropper of rubbing alcohol in each ear to dry out the ear and destroy any bacteria.

If you have any history of ear infections, swimmer's ear, etc., after you shower it might be good idea to put some alcohol (alcohol/white vinegar) in your ears to dry them. Or do this as a general practice after swimming or showering.

Some swear by "candling." In this technique, a candle is placed in the ear canal. The wick is lighted and the candle is allowed to burn for a short period of time. Supposedly, the burning flame creates a vacuum at the other end of the candle, which can suck wax from the canal. Since there are safer and quite effective ways to remove ear wax, candling seems like an unwise alternative. Hot wax can burn the external ear, and if any gets into the canal it can cause a painful burn, infection, or even a perforation of the ear drum.

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Extending Cell Phone Coverage

Here in the Outback, Cingular Wireless has the most market penetration. They have a tower in Honey Grove, Texas. For reasons known only to Cingular, the signal is strong if you are South of the tower, but is dramatically weaker to the North. The signal also is weak to the East, apparently to conform to some FCC regulation about not putting a strong signal into an adjoining area around Paris, TX, where there are other cell providers. In the Cingular world around here, Paris is an island into which you must be "roaming" to make and receive cell calls.

For years, people North of Honey Grove have complained about the poor service as close as 5 miles from the Cingular tower! Now, with the advent of GSM phones, the coverage area is even worse. Many signed a petition protesting the poor service. I initiated the petition, had it distributed to several locations, and wrote the cover letter that went along with the petition.

On Nov. 4, 2005, I got an e-mail from Cingular with a Word attachment from the Cingular V.P. for North Texas. In his letter, he said that Cingular was conducting an in-depth study of the coverage problems we noted in our submissions and would be back in touch when they had more information about possible resolutions. The point is: never call a customer-service rep to complain about service. Bad news never filters UP the chain of command. Bad news has to be sent to the TOP and let it filter down to wherever the appropriate action can be taken. Later, I got a second letter from the Cingular V.P. which said that they had made some adjustments to our local tower, but intended no further improvements. For example, the new tower that had been rumored (and noted to me in an e-mail from a Cingular supervisor) was most likely not going to be built in 2006. You know, allocation of resources. That's corporate speak for "you folks don't contribute enough income for us to really care about you." Some of us did see a marginal increase in signal coverage, but nothing worth writing home about. Folks out here are beginning to explore alternatives to Cingular, like the recent merger of Alltel and CellularOne.

In the meantime, I set about to find out how I could get a better signal in my home North of Honey Grove and on the trip from Honey Grove to Paris. And just fiddle with "longer-distance" cell phone reception in general. My first stop was at the ranch of a friend who is a Ph.D. engineer in the telecom business in Dallas - and a fellow ham-radio operator. Mike, Dr. Antenna.

First, my friend pointed out the GSM phones (and presumably most recent phones) adjust their output power depending on how much incoming signal your cell phone is seeing. If you are getting a weak signal (few bars), the transmitter compensates by increasing its power output. This has a couple of ramifications. Higher transmit power means your battery runs down faster. Also, if you hold the phone to your ear, the higher transmit power will obviously put more radio-frequency energy into your brain. I have discussed in another article whether cell phones cause brain tumors. You get seemingly sound data on both sides of the issue. One study said that people in rural areas had more tumors than city dwellers. Are you following this? Rural users are almost always dealing with weak incoming signals, so their cell phone cranks up its transmitter output power. Use of an earpiece/mike or the speaker-phone function will get the radio energy further away from your brain. Studies aside, those options seem sensible.

My friend had a 25dBi-gain cell-phone bay from an old tower, which he passed on to me. I hung this from a beam on the patio on the side of the house facing the cell-phone tower. I drilled a small hole in the very lower corner of the aluminum window frame to pass the coax inside. I tried a mag-mount cell antenna inside and it was okay. But, I settled on the Radio Shack Model 17-345 (Universal Antenna for Wireless Phones @ $31.99), which is flat, small, and unobtrusive. It has a table stand and two suction cups for use in a car, etc. I put the Rad Shack antenna on a lamp table and faced the antenna broadside to my recliner, and it does appear to quite directional. Yikes! Engineers can tell you how much greater signal you have to receive to go from about 1 bar to six or seven. It is a lot more signal. On my NOKIA, seven bars is max.

For those without an old cell phone bay in a neighbor's barn, you can buy a small Yagi (directional antenna) that looks like a small TV antenna or one of the new UHF-only HDTV antennas. So far, I have found only 800MHz cell-phone yagis at several sites. Check with your cell provider to see what freqeuency band(s) they are using in your primary area of operation. I am still looking for a dual-band yagi that will cover the 800+/1850+ frequncies. Aim this antenna at the nearest cell tower. I happen to have a GPS receiver and have "marked" the cell tower location, so I know exactly the compass direction and distance to the tower. You can fiddle back and forth until you get maximum signal with the Yagi.

If you live quite close to the tower, you might be able to just use a mag-mount antenna outside and another mag-mount antenna (or the Rad Shack Model 17-345) inside. If you have a metal patio roof on the side of the house facing the cell tower, just slap the mag-mount antenna upside down on the front edge of the patio roof. Again, I just happen to have that exact layout, but the high-gain outside antenna worked much better. A good mag-mount (I like the ones from Larsen) has about 3dBi gain. Some, which are often touted as "trucker antennas," have about 5dbi gain. If you use a mag-mount antenna, they are designed to be mounted on the roof or trunk of a car, where the metal acts as a "countepoise" to provide maximum gain. If you mount a mag-mount antenna outside your window or inside your house, you need to have at least an 8 x 8 inch metal plate to mount the mag-mount antenna. A simple solution is a steel cookie sheet or shallow baking pan (steel, not aluminum). My outside antenna has 25dBi gain. A small yagi would have about 12dBi or so of gain.

Stick-on-the-glass mobile cell antennas are probably not a good idea for the outside link of your passive reflector. Their claims aside, they do not seem to pass a lot of signal through the glass. If you have double-pane windows, forget the idea entirely. My stick-on antenna specifically says not to put it on a house with double-pane windows. The air gap is too large to couple the signal effectively.

What about extending coverage while in your vehicle? The simple solution has been used for years. Put an outside cell-antenna (I have a dual-band one that covers both GSM frequency bands) on your vehicle roof. Again, the stick-on-the-glass types may work in some locations, but nothing can beat a full-size dual-bander on the roof, with the coax snaked in past the rather copious weather stripping we have on modern vehicles. Professional installations drill a hole in the roof, run the coax the inside header, and down to the termination point.

More and more phones do NOT have a jack to plug in an external antenna (my NOKIA 6010 has no antenna jack). There are inductive cups or cradles that snap on the back of phones like the NOKIA. The NOKIA 6010, for example, has a loop antenna inside the unit at the top of the phone. The inductive cradle has a matching antenna coil which transfers energy from the external antenna to the cell phone. They don't transfer as much energy as a direct connection, in my experience. My old Motorola had an external jack. Many of the "hands-free" car adpater kits use an inductive loop to couple phones like the NOKIA 6010.

So, you put the good mag-mount (Larsen/Wilson ?) on your roof and you either plugged it into your phone or used an inductive cradle - and your signal still sucks as you make your rounds. Since the signal out here in the Outback (outside of town) is basically poor and spotty at best, I spent $189 for a dual-band cell-phone amplifier for use with GSM phones and towers. It boosts the transmit power to 2-3 watts depending on which band you are operating - and you get a stronger incoming signal. Since I have the NOKIA 6010, I come out of the amplifier with an inductive cradle that snaps on the back of the phone. With the Larsen dual-band mag-mount antenna on the roof and the amplifier, incoming and outgoing signals increased dramatically. The amplifier works on 12 volts DC and plugs into the cigarette lighter socket. For fun, I going to try the amplifier inside the house, connected to my outdoor antenna with a 12 volt DC supply from my ham-radio station. Any 12 volt DC supply with about 2 amps output, such as some sold at Radio Shack, could also be used to power the amplifier indoors. (I update this when I have done the tests.)

There are a lot of $400-$600 cell-phone amps listed on the Web. I was not willing to pay that much. After many hours of searching and reading, I settled on an Inteligain dual-band DBA8-19. It covers 824-849 MHz and 1850-1910 MHz. It will not work with Nextel phones, according to the .PDF brochure (www.inteligain.com). The unit is solidly built and uses some technology from Motorola (and probably some Motorola transistors, etc.). They claim a possible increase in cell coverage of up to 20 miles! My coverage has increased dramatically. Although there are cheaper prices on the Web, I paid $189 for the amplifier, $15 for an inductive cradle for my NOKIA 6010, and about $12 for a power cord with a cigarette-lighter plug attached. The unit comes with a power cord with bare ends, if you like making your own lashup for the dash 12-volt outlet. The dealer I bought the Inteligain amp from now shows the Intellgain DBA8-19 under Dyna-Boost amplifiers. Do your own sleuthing about Inteligain. I can't find anything bad about the amps. Mine works great.

I bought my Larsen dual-band mag-mount cell-phone antenna from a dealer in Sherman, TX, for about $39, but you can check out their whole line at www.radiallarsen.com, such as which connector a particular model uses. Mine is in the MMC series. It has the right connector to attach to my mobile amplifier. I have used Larsen mobile ham-radio antennas for years and am partial to them. There are other good antennas, but you do your own research and see if you can find a better one.

The bad news is that there is no "standard" connector for cell phones, cell-phone antennas, and cell-phone amplifiers. In general you will see FME, TNC and Mini-UHF. Make sure you know what connectors your equipment requires and whether the connector is a "male" or "female" connector. There are all kinds of adapters for sale to match one type connector to another. I gave up in disgust and bought one of every kind sold by Radio Shack. And I still do not have all adapters for all the possible combinations. Look at the specs. My Larsen mag-mount co-ax cable has a TNC male connector which mates with the TNC female on the Inteligain amplifier. No adapter may be needed if you plan ahead. Other Larsen models in the same family have either an FME or a MPL connector. Have fun sorting through the connector nightmare.

Engineers who design this stuff ought to be required to stand in a retail store for six months and listen to the people bitch about the lack of commonality with the connectors. Marketing people ought to have "rigths of refusal" over stupid designs. In the CIA, we sent some engineers overseas to work with planting clandestine transmitters, etc. Boy, did they change their tune when they got back to the labs in Washington. Marketing should always start with the customer's perspective and work backward to engineering requirements. Sadly, this does not often happen.

Most cell-phone sales people are not technical people. If you ask them how much receiver gain a particular phone has, they just roll their eyes. It is fashionable today to have (1) a tiny phone (2) one that has a camera, plays MP3s, surfs the Web and allows you to send and receive e-mail. Logic would tell you that if you cram so many features into a tiny phone, something has to give. What usually gives is the useful range of the phone!

I asked a supervisor in Texas to inquire of the network technical people which phone being offered by Cingular at that time would be the best "fringe" phone, that is, it would have a sensitive receiver, and a robust transmitter. The answer I got was the NOKIA 6010, which happens to be one of their less expensive models. But, my NOKIA 6010 receives and transmits well in areas where some friends do not get good coverage with their fancy flip phones with cameras. If I am so inclined, which I am not, I can surf the Web with it. The per-minute Web rate is outrageous and the download speeds are pathetic! Other Cingular technical experts might disagree, but I am convinced that I have the best phone for the Outback, and even then there are many "no signal" areas as close as seven miles from the tower. Viva la Amplifier.

Here are just a few of the sources I used to buy various components:

www.radioshack.com

www.wpsantennas.com

www.anything4wireless.com (Coming soon Dyna-Boost mobile cell-phone amps, whatever they are.)

www.discountcell.com

Here are some other sources that may prove useful:

www.primecellular.com Antennas, amps, adapters, etc.

www.alernativewireless.com (Wilson cell-phone amps, antennas, and some good tutorials about cell phone antennas, amps. etc.)

www.maximumsignal.com (Inteligain amps, various antennas, etc.)

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COPYRIGHT 2000 Richard C. Rhodes

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