Whilst we probably won’t know what Frodo’s other plan is for a while cos he’ll be off line again... I am very curious myself... just thought I’d mention this.
In remote Outback Aus obviously comms and navigation for us were quite important. We have an EPIRB, Iridium sat phone, UHF radio, GPS and 4G cell phones and iPad. Now terrain there makes the reach of cellular a totally different experience to NZ for obvious reasons, NZ is the hardest country for reliable cellular comms I’ve ever been to, with all the terrain shadows, dead spots and drop outs.
What made a massive difference for us was installing a high quality cell phone antenna kit on the Hilux. Where a handset would maybe show zero or one bar of signal intermittently, plugged into the handsfree and using the antenna you’d get 2 bars and an easy, drop out free call. In NZ this kit is bloody marvellous as it makes a cellphone work in areas our mates’ phones just won’t with the same carrier. Its not perfect by any means, a deep valley is a deep valley, period, but on the road and in marginal areas it overcomes the signal patchiness most of the time. Worth looking at if you’re on the road a lot and getting fed up with drop outs.
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