All this talk of gear recently has made me seriously reevaluate my own chasing strategy and what software/gear I use. I'm a minimalist, and my "equipment" for the past 2 years has consisted of an iPhone with RadarScope, a laptop for perusing surface data while waiting for storms to fire, a paper DeLorme road atlas for navigation (supplemented by google maps), and a Sony ILCE-6000 mirrorless camera (good enough for my purposes).
I'm satisfied with my gear, but I have noticed that I commonly lose cell data (and therefore radar data since I'm only using RadarScope) for most of the duration of my chases in eastern CO. Invariably, by the time I leave pavement and the storms really get going, I lose service completely and have to resort to visual-only chasing. It's interesting for practicing my storm structure recognition skills but is obviously not optimal for chase success.
I have a standard Xfinity Mobile cell data plan with reasonable coverage. Xfinity's official coverage map for eastern CO shows no areas without coverage, but based on personal experience this seems to be a lie. An independent website (coveragemap.com) has a coverage map that lines up pretty closely with what I've experienced on the ground:
There are some pretty gnarly holes here, especially ENE of Pueblo, where I end up a lot. Other notable areas are the sand hill region between I-70/US-34 and the Cheyenne ridge north of I-76.
My question for the experienced members of the forum is this: are data holes an inevitable part of chasing, or could I simply alleviate this problem by switching to a different service provider? Additionally, is there hardware I could use to improve my cell reception? I'm aware of Starlink but that's way out of my price range for the time being. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I'm satisfied with my gear, but I have noticed that I commonly lose cell data (and therefore radar data since I'm only using RadarScope) for most of the duration of my chases in eastern CO. Invariably, by the time I leave pavement and the storms really get going, I lose service completely and have to resort to visual-only chasing. It's interesting for practicing my storm structure recognition skills but is obviously not optimal for chase success.
I have a standard Xfinity Mobile cell data plan with reasonable coverage. Xfinity's official coverage map for eastern CO shows no areas without coverage, but based on personal experience this seems to be a lie. An independent website (coveragemap.com) has a coverage map that lines up pretty closely with what I've experienced on the ground:
There are some pretty gnarly holes here, especially ENE of Pueblo, where I end up a lot. Other notable areas are the sand hill region between I-70/US-34 and the Cheyenne ridge north of I-76.
My question for the experienced members of the forum is this: are data holes an inevitable part of chasing, or could I simply alleviate this problem by switching to a different service provider? Additionally, is there hardware I could use to improve my cell reception? I'm aware of Starlink but that's way out of my price range for the time being. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
