First Phone
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My uncle had a very early car phone, there was a suitcase-sized box in the trunk. And the handpiece and dial mounted on the console.
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Seen on FB.
LOL.
My first "mobile" phone was a Uniden. It was built into my car and had an antenna on the rear passenger window. It was mounted on a stand bolted to the floor and (for some extra cash) it had a microphone attached to the driver's sun visor.
But...it had (I believe) 3W of power. I could get a signal practically anywhere, even in 1990.
@george-k said in First Phone:
My first "mobile" phone was a Uniden. It was built into my car and had an antenna on the rear passenger window.
I remember that my father had something similar. It cost as much as a small car. You couldn’t just call the phone. Rather, one had to know approximately where the car is to be able to call.
By the way, 3W isn’t a lot. A mobile ham radio transceiver for 2m band will usually have at least 50W, which, with a car antenna, is sufficient for maybe 20 miles of reach (OTOH, with a good antenna and shortwave and CW instead of speech you can reach somebody 5000 miles away with 1W)
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@george-k said in First Phone:
My first "mobile" phone was a Uniden. It was built into my car and had an antenna on the rear passenger window.
I remember that my father had something similar. It cost as much as a small car. You couldn’t just call the phone. Rather, one had to know approximately where the car is to be able to call.
By the way, 3W isn’t a lot. A mobile ham radio transceiver for 2m band will usually have at least 50W, which, with a car antenna, is sufficient for maybe 20 miles of reach (OTOH, with a good antenna and shortwave and CW instead of speech you can reach somebody 5000 miles away with 1W)
@klaus I had no idea.
Somewhere, I read that todays hand-held cellphones only have 0.3W of power.
If only JBryan were here to comment...
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@klaus I had no idea.
Somewhere, I read that todays hand-held cellphones only have 0.3W of power.
If only JBryan were here to comment...
@george-k said in First Phone:
Somewhere, I read that todays hand-held cellphones only have 0.3W of power.
I believe they typically have a peak power of about 2W, which would be ok to reach a tower within 5 miles or so. In good circumstances it can be significantly more. I guess @Axtremus could correct me if I’m wrong.
I’ve had friends who were using the moon as a deflector of UHF signals to talk to people far away, and that worked with surprisingly low power.
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@george-k said in First Phone:
Mrs. George still misses her flip phones.
Hey, I enjoyed the size (and battery life) of the flip phone. Although the "texting" (press 8 three times to type a letter) is funny to think about now.
For me, #2 was my first one. Didn't have my own cell phone until senior year of college. I know some of you are a little older than me, but for those in my generation and younger, it's almost hard to imagine what college was like before you could just text someone anytime. We <gasp> would have to tell someone ahead of time where/when we would be and if we got there early we would just.......wait, until the other person (hopefully) showed up. What a time.
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