[Chris_3]

I have a 2001 CL600 with the built in Timeport whose network is obviously dead or dying. I went the Argos Bluetooth route which was as painless an installation for me as it has been for others. Then I replaced my timeport cradle with the smoothtalker cradle for the GSM RAZR V3 wanting to use the linear compensator and bumper antenna to get around the infra red metallic coating in my car windows which does in fact cause me to lose a bar of signal strength in my rural area.

When I put my phone in the newly installed cradle I lost signal strength rather than gaining it. Upon further investigation (including going to the FCC website using the dual band compensator FCC id to gain a tremendous amount of information about what the compensator does and how it works) I found out that the compensator was powered off. I tested it using teleaide (the old system that is dying) and found out how to power it on. I tested this with a lash up wiring system and found that I gain 1 bar of signal strength as a result of using the linear compensator. My current plan is to use a relay powered off "key in position one"voltage to power up the dual compensator. The other issue that I have is that the compensator has a digitally controlled attenuator on the transmit path - unknown purpose but presumably to either compensate for different phones or to prevent too high a transmit signal strength in urban areas. Comments on this would be welcome. Since I have no means of altering it it will be left at whatever setting it was at and we will see what happens.

Newbie to this forum posting but these forums have been so helpful to me that I thought I would write up this note since it did not look like it had been discussed before.