Communication or Lack Thereof

I am not a Chatty Kathy. In fact, until we settled into gate guarding, I had a phone with a little over two hours of talk time (monthly). No data or internet- and I was happy. Not Missy, she is the "clothes horse" of the chat world. She can and has racked up other wordly numbers in voice minutes and chat counts. Those jokes about a phone growing out of your ear definitely apply to her. When it came time to renew my phone it just made more sense for all of us to be on the same plan and carrier. Well, almost the same plan-I think Missy has some unlimited deal. Point being; I did research before we started gate guarding. I knew we would need an air card (I still call it a MiFi) to get us internet service. I also knew we would eventually need some sort of booster to amplify our phone signal when we ended up on that gate in the middle of nowhere. For some time we got by by using a "in car" booster. We put the antenna up on the roof of the RV and hung the "thingy" that would have gone in the car somewhere inside the coach. I had read suggestions on several blogs; but this was working well, so I just got by with this set up. Well, we are now on the gate in the middle of nowhere, and we were lucky to get a single bar of signal. The time had come to buy a real in home booster for our cellular signal. As I said before, I can get by with a very basic phone plan. However, if you are going to do this gate guarding thing, communication is a necessity. Having a clear connection is just as important-basic plan or otherwise. After several instances of often comical and always frustrating attempts to communicate, I set about in earnest to find and purchase a booster. The old adage that you get what you pay for probably applies here, but I did let money affect my decision. I read in blogs and from chatting with other gate guards that some folks were spending mucho pesos on these things.Then I read about this SOHO YX 545 by z boost. It had great reviews and was available at Walmart. Best of all, it cost around $200. That was cheaper than a lot of other offerings I had seen out there. Well we finally got the booster and it was a cinch to hook up. The most time consuming thing was getting on top of the RV-we attached the antenna to the ladder. Once we had everything connected we plugged it in and we had four bars of signal! Best of all, our internet was blazingly fast. I still don't talk or chat much (how do you guys/gals work those tiny keys?), but I feel much more secure knowing the phone works.