Help! Seeking C-motech Ccu-650 Antenna Adapter Cable (cat Cdma Ev-do Usb)

[lsemprini]

Hi,

My friend has a C-motech CCU-650 with EV-DO CDMA service from CAT but he cannot use it due to poor signal strength (he's in Soppong/Bang Ma Pha, between Pai and Mae Hong Son).

He has an antenna but needs the ADAPTER from the small coaxial cable connector of the CCU-650 to the "standard" antenna coax connector used in Thailand (all the shops here in Chiang Mai really do seem to use the same connector on the antenna side; it might be called a TNC connector on the antenna side, but I'm not sure of that).

The CCU-650 uses a different connector than the CCU-680 (we already verified this) and CAT is out of stock of the CCU-650 adapter cable

Does anyone have one? Pls advise!

Any suggestions as to where to look?

We have tried the Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai CAT offices, as well as the two biggest wireless accessory shops in Kat Suan Geaw (Central) shopping mall. They have several connectors but none fit.

I asked at a few places in BKK but they reeeeeaaally have no clue because there is no CDMA service in Bangkok.

C-Motech also makes a "Franklin Wireless" CDU-680 which looks identical; but does anyone know if it uses the same antenna connector? I can easily find $8 antenna connectors for the CDU-680 on eBay (but not the CCU at all).

[lsemprini]

C-Motech also makes a "Franklin Wireless" CDU-680 which looks identical; but does anyone know if it uses the same antenna connector? I can easily find $8 antenna connectors for the CDU-680 on eBay (but not the CCU at all).

Sorry, that should have said:

C-Motech also makes a "Franklin Wireless" CDU-650 which looks identical to the CCU-650; but does anyone know if it uses the same antenna connector? I can easily find $8 antenna connectors for the CDU-650 on eBay (but not the CCU-650 at all).

[lsemprini]

Today we visited the CAT office in Chiang Mai again and spoke to an engineer there.

He also said they are out of stock, but confirmed that the antenna-side connector is a TNC connector.

He also suspects that the "Franklin Wireless" CDU-650 has the same antenna connector (since some farang customers have brought those units over to use with CAT) but is not 100% sure of that.

I also emailed C-motech in Korea asking if CDU-650 and CCU-650 have the same antenna connector but have not heard back. Still hoping!

[MattFS218]

Today we visited the CAT office in Chiang Mai again and spoke to an engineer there.

He also said they are out of stock, but confirmed that the antenna-side connector is a TNC connector.

He also suspects that the "Franklin Wireless" CDU-650 has the same antenna connector (since some farang customers have brought those units over to use with CAT) but is not 100% sure of that.

I also emailed C-motech in Korea asking if CDU-650 and CCU-650 have the same antenna connector but have not heard back. Still hoping!

I have the specs for the ccu-650 antenna if you know a cable maker, i can email them to you. I got them from the US distributor of cmotech.

If you can't find an adapter, you might have luck finding an amplifier. Some amps act as wireless repeaters, that do not require a physical connection to the modem. I use a Wilson with my ccu-650. My signal sucked before, but now it's good.

[SM7WGP]

Today we visited the CAT office in Chiang Mai again and spoke to an engineer there.

He also said they are out of stock, but confirmed that the antenna-side connector is a TNC connector.

He also suspects that the "Franklin Wireless" CDU-650 has the same antenna connector (since some farang customers have brought those units over to use with CAT) but is not 100% sure of that.

I also emailed C-motech in Korea asking if CDU-650 and CCU-650 have the same antenna connector but have not heard back. Still hoping!

I have the specs for the ccu-650 antenna if you know a cable maker, i can email them to you. I got them from the US distributor of cmotech.

If you can't find an adapter, you might have luck finding an amplifier. Some amps act as wireless repeaters, that do not require a physical connection to the modem. I use a Wilson with my ccu-650. My signal sucked before, but now it's good.

You dont need the Contact plug in the End.

You only need to Solder Crocodile Clips on low loss cable and You hook it up to the small antenna and ground on the side you are on the air. that what i did here in CNX.

Cat Tele com out of stock they never ever had any in stock , So that the lafter of the day.

Edited March 8, 2009 by SM7WGP

[lsemprini]

Success!!!! Finally!

It was a long, painful process which involved many false starts and chains of referrals through Thailand, Korea, and California, but we finally found a suitable CCU-650 adapter cable and antenna so my friend can get decent up and down bandwidth in the countryside.

Here are all the details in case anyone else wants to do this.

The external connector used on the CCU-650 is not the same as that used on the CCU-680 which CAT is now selling. Most people know this already.

Despite posts to the contrary, the connector used on the CCU-650 is also NOT the same connector used on the CDU-650 (often marketed throuh Korean C-Motech's American brand, Franklin Wireless). So, if you buy a CDU-650 connector off of ebay, it will not work. It took many cycles of email through C-Motech Korea and Franklin Wireless to verify this.

The nearly-impossible-to-find CCU-650 connector is manufactured in Thailand by a company called Family Corp, Ltd. (02-235-5630, one name there is Khun Top). However they just manufacture the connector itself, not a cable, and you can only buy from them in bulk.

There is a random buy named Khun Mao in Bangkok (086-460-1070) who makes a roughly 6" cable that goes from the CCU-650's external adapter to a TNC connector, for 500 Baht. I am not sure if Khun Mao speaks English or not, but I ordered one from him, paying by bank transfer, and received the cable promptly. The fit of the CCU-650 antenna cable is suspicious, but it works: you really have to cram the connector in, because as you are sliding it in, it scrapes against the silver plastic that surrounds the opening for the connector (notice how the opening for the connector in the CCU-650 is not centered but is almost flush against one side of the unit). So it goes in very tight. It might be possible to scrape off a little bit of plastic before inserting the connector, but I didn't do this, because it's also possible that the metal contacts of the connector are incorrectly sized, and maybe that tightness is what makes the thing work (I have no evidence of this either way, but there was no reason to try).

The TNC connector at the other end of the cable is just one of a million different kinds of connectors used for radio frequency (TNC, UHF, VHF, FME, ...). We eventually needed a 200B adapter (TNC to VHF in our case) to connect to our antenna.

The next step was to find an antenna that we could hook up.

Chances are that you will be able to obtain a suitable antenna from your local CAT branch. This is not because CAT sells antennas. This is because nearly every CAT engineer in the country moonlights by selling services and accessories using the tools and connections available to them in their CAT job!

We first tried a somewhat flimsy aluminum antenna (2000B including long cable) that one CAT employee had sourced from Bangkok. It was totally useless. When we plugged in the antenna, our signal level went from 4 bars to 1!

Then we tried a second antenna from a different CAT engineer (also 2000B including long cable), a slightly better built and LONGER (this is highly suspicious: antennas for CAT's 800 MHz CDMA signals of the same design should all be the same length due to a basic physical law! One of the two antennas is clearly wrong). Placing that antenna at the top of a long bamboo pole, in the same plane as the ground (e.g. pointing side-to-side and not up-and-down), pointing towards the mountain with the nearest CAT tower, we were finally able to get a good signal. Finally.

FALSE STARTS TO AVOID

Many cellphone accessory shops sell antennas (often as cheap as 1400B without cable). These antennas are generally of very poor quality, and more seriously, the people selling them are rarely aware of what frequency the antennas are designed for, or even aware that there is an issue there. Different cellphone and internet providers in Thailand use 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and soon 2100MHz, and if you buy the wrong antenna you will get only a tiny fraction of your boost potential. So I suggest finding an engineer to buy the antenna from. You might pay a bit more but it might work.

We tried every cellphone shop in Chiang Mai looking for the CCU-650 adapter. Some shops had large numbers of antenna adapters, but of them had the CCU-650 one because CCU-650 is old. If you have a different device, then shops that have the most adapters are in the Kat Suan Geaw shopping mall:

- bottom floor: large-ish cellphone shop directly adjacent to (shares wall with) KFC

- third floor: large cellphone accessory shop with blue sign and rows and rows and rows of cellphone accessories, cables, an entire 20m wall with nothing but chargers, etc. Sorry I can't remember the name of the shop, but it is distinctly larger and accessory-focused compared with any other cellphone shop on the 3rd floor. They also sell the "cheap" antennas.

Don't try to find any CDMA equipment at all in Bangkok, as CAT's service doesn't work there. If it did, I think my search would have been a quick, easy trip to Pantip Bangkok.

Hope this helps someone!

I'm sure you can do it for cheaper if you want to crack open your unit's case and solder things, but we didn't want to do either.

[lsemprini]

One more detail:

After writing the previous post, I got a message from one user out there who has been able to use the inexpensive antenna adapters from eBay USA that are designed for the Franklin Wireless CDU-650. So those cables might work on the Thailand-sourced C-Motech CCU-650 after all, even though Franklin Wireless seemed very sure that the CDU-650 and CCU-650 connectors are different; perhaps the difference explains the tight fit?

One example eBay auction is:

http://cgi.ebay.com/FRANKLIN-WIRELESS-CDU-...93%3A1|294%3A50

The price difference is not that great: the connectors on eBay are very cheap (few USD) but you have to factor in shipping to Thailand too.

[drappthailand]

I think I have the same one and I'm not using it. As soon as my visa comes for my fiancee, I could send it to you.

[nikster]

Interesting. Any idea how this works for the newer CCU-680? Does CAT sell adapters / antennas for these? Because I have a friend who's just outside CDMA range, he'd love to have such a thing. I get 0 - 1 bars when I stand on his roof, so I guess a proper antenna there would be good enough for decent reception.

[lsemprini]

For the CCU-680, which is a more recent model (though not the most recent at time of posting), it's much easier to find the adapter. The CAT office in Chiang Mai has it, for example.

[monekyface]

What kind of up and down speeds do you get with the finished product? Is it connected to a directional yagi type antenna? How much is the air card, how much is service, and how much is the antenna? Great reading by the way- super thread.