No Bars in More Places – AT&T vs. Verizon

With all of this digital nomadity so far, one thing remains constant: the need for internet. And one of the weirdnesses of my day job is that I can’t have my own personal phone and their cell phone plan (wat), which means reimbursement and picking my own plan and all the “fun” of discovering what is best in an area.

AT&T Pros and Cons:
Pro: With the Mofi hotspot and a SIM from an iPad on my unlimited data plan, I haven’t experienced any sort of data caps yet.
Con: But, when the signal is low…. it’s a horror show. Case in point – Mesa, AZ. Yes, one of the largest and newest metropolitan areas in the country, the greater Phoenix region, seemed to have the absolute worst AT&T coverage I’ve seen yet, and that includes driving across the middle of nowhere truckstops.

Verizon Pros and Cons:
Pro: Didn’t need to go to the store at all to get set up. The eSIM in the iPhone 11 Pro Max Super Giga Bonker, or whatever the marketing department came up with, allowed me to almost instantly switch from AT&T to Verizon on my personal plan. And since Andy’s got another AT&T phone, we can have some balance to the force; if one doesn’t have service, the other has to…
Con: HOLY COW EXPENSIVE. Not only do you get a data cap (though how hard that cap is, I haven’t experienced yet), but $100 a month gets you A Single Line with 35 GB of data hotspot.

T-Mobile – An incomplete review:
I had a T-Mobile SIM as a second line in the iPhone, and voice/text only. Can’t go wrong with $20 for a phone line, though. The downfall is when you want them as a backup data plan; again, back up to $70 for a single line with only 10 GB of data through hotspot.

Beats the Alternative – Satellite:
I’ve not been able to get some decent information on the net about this, but Viasat seems to do RV plans, but on the high end of $150 a month plus equipment. RVDataSat seems to have real unlimited plans, but the cost of the equipment is upwards of $15k!

Week in review…

We departed Vegas a week ago for Mesa, AZ to attend a book selling event.

Arizona was nice, it was good to hang out with Damian and Apple as well as see people at the convention – but the convention itself was a bit lackluster compared to prior years…

Green Acres RV Park was nice, but tight. Every available space was filled.

We’re now in a lovely RV Park in Palm Springs, California bringing our trip to twenty-eight states visited so far.

Back on the road…

We’ve been back in Vegas for nine days and have cleaned and refilled the Airstream for travel again. Today we depart for Phoenix to attend a convention and hopefully sell some books. After that we’re heading up the pacific coast for my day job, then back to Vegas.

Once back in Vegas for a few days the travel continues, but by plane. While Sean will be heading to Minnesota, I’ll be heading to Boston. Then we both meet up for two weeks in Vegas as friends come to visit before heading out to Chicago in December.

It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks.

Change of Plans…

Given that there is now snow falling in Denver and more on the mountains we’ve decided to change course and head south through Oklahoma and Texas to get back to Vegas.

Our plan is to get back to Vegas sometime in the middle of next week, do maintenance, and hit the road bound for Phoenix, Palm Springs, Fresno, Delano, and maybe some travel to Portland, OR…

Back on the road!

Or on the road again…

Today we left the Airstream Campus and made our way south to King’s Island for a day of roller coasters, fried food, and fun!

It was all of that and more.

After that it was time to hit the road, leave Ohio, and make camp just outside of Indianapolis. The KOA is amazingly nice!

Now to cook dinner and relax!

Airstream Factory Day One – Warranty Repair

So today we pulled into the Airstream Factory to have some fit and finish warranty work done. They did everything I asked them except for one vent and one window. We’ll have the local dealership tend to those when we get back.

The factory is huge!

We are staying in B2 – the red dot!

Tomorrow we are taking the Factor Tour to see what goes into building one of these units. I’m looking forward to it!

Current Progress by Map

Epic Fail and Recovery – Network Gear

So since we’re talking about Plan B situations on our coast to coast journey, let’s discuss network connectivity. Doing the digital nomad thing is great as long as you can connect to the rest of the world. For my first attempt, I failed twice with the Netgear Nighthawk M1 Mobile Hotspot Router. (TLDR spoilers: Amazon link here but who cares because it’s crap and don’t buy it.)

The fail started pretty fast even before we left. The idea with this router is you take any ol’ SIM card with a data plan (in my case, liberated from Fox’s iPad Pro 1st gen, an AT&T legacy unlimited plan, mmmmm….), drop it in the device, set up a little hotspot with the web page or app, voila. Instant internet anywhere.

What I got instead was a failure to charge the battery because the device was too hot. In Las Vegas. At 85º F. WTF. So this device wasn’t going to be the long term live in the Airstream and enjoy the multitude of USB charger ports available. Okay.

Next failure – The critical role of a hotspot is to BE A HOTSPOT. This one didn’t. After a little while of being turned on, it just decided…. nah man, we coo. It didn’t shut off, it just stoped providing any sort of connections. Not for lack of signal, the SSID just wouldn’t appear to any devices. You’d need to hard reboot the device with a battery removal to get the thing to respond anymore.

So, maybe just a bad unit, right? Swappy swappy time with Amazon. New unit arrives via Amazon Prime to my delusional uncle’s house who doesn’t understand why Trump is sending him random packages with license plates and electronics even though the label clearly says FOR SEAN on it…. ANYWAY. New boss, same as the old boss.

Maybe it was just losing AT&T (more bahs in more places…), and I needed a better antenna? Oh, Amazon. Your Netgear MIMO antenna in “retail packaging” was TWICE sent as a display model with clearly noted on the packaging that it was not for sale.

Plan B

So, buh bye went the Netgear. And I found https://mofinetwork.com on Amazon instead. This is NOT a simple router. This appears to be a full linux install in a small ruggedized box with metal enclosure, two cell antennas, two 2.4GHz antennas, and a sweet 12 volt adapter with a fuse tap for always on network. Now have successfully done multiple meetings from I-95 from the truck (where the router is a good 35′ away while driving down the highway). This one has been a winner so far.