My friend Rob rang me out if the blue the other day, to say he was standing by our Motorhome outside our house and was gasping for a cup of coffee!
Not long after we were sitting on our deck in Milford, coffees in hand, and planning the weekend. Rob and Helen were keen to head to Sullivan’s Bay, Mahurangi. The forecast was the only niggle but as the week went by, but the forecast changed and we were on.
On Friday, a package arrived in my letterbox from Dunedin. It was my new Wifi 4g router for Rafe. A bit of a gamble as I’ve been hanging out for a NZMCA system that is in the pipeline.

The router is a little beauty as it runs on 12v, has the usual Ethernet ports, supports external aerials and best of all, is reasonably priced. This is the first broadband priced system that I have found that will work in a Motorhome. To say I couldn’t get the package opened fast enough was an understatement!
I plugged it in with the 240v transformer that comes with it and I was immediately able to connect to it and was surfing the web. Even though, I’m pretty tech savvy, this rarely happens so I was impressed.

The next day as we headed north to Sullivan’s bay to meet Rob, Helen and Chloe, we stopped at the Silverdale Pak n save for a few groceries. While Fiona went in, I was keen to give the router a go while were in a coverage area. I plugged it in with our newly soldered 12v temporary ciggy plug and away it went. I was surfing at a phenomenal speed in the carpark!
After loading the fridge and cupboards with goodies, we were off.
As we headed north to Sullivan’s, the forecast on the radio had changed dramatically and it was awful. Heavy rain and lots of wind from the east, perfect for Sullivan’s Bay 🤔🍷🌂 !(Sullivan’s faces into the east )

Sullivans Bay

Daytrippers enjoying the beach

The Daytrippers

Getting blown inside out

School Holiday campers

The other park

Despite the miserable weather, being the first weekend of the school holidays, there were quite a few campers and plenty of day trippers enjoying the beach and foreshore. Sullivan’s is always good and it doesn’t really matter about the weather when you have good company.

Having been here before, I knew that a cellphone signal was hopeless unless you were virtually paddling on the beach so had prepared myself for a no network situation and no playing routers.

After settling down Rafe, in went the ciggy plug and we plonked the router temporarily above Rafes doorway inside. It was away. We had three bars out of five of 3G data streaming in an area where you can’t normally get a cell signal with no external aerials.. Amazing! The throughput wasn’t that flash ( nowhere near as fast as Silverdale’s 4g ) but it worked and for an area with no cell signal, a fantastic result.

Fiona later hooked in with Netflix and watched a movie. Even the ranger was excited about it and poked his head in the door for a look!

Now we need to get serious about installing it properly so I’ve booked in to my favourite installers at Vantage RV to get an external aerial installed so we can get the best out of it. For an area like Sullivan’s which is well known for bad cell service, a great result.

Rob and Chloe logged in from their van three parks away and on the other side of another Motorhome so that was good too.
Later we had Fiona’s homemade buttered chicken with Rob, Helen and Chloe.

Just give you an idea with the broadband, I speed tested it tonight with 4g and got 13 Mbps down and nearly 7 up. Pretty fast with no aerials and we’re talking over 100gigs a month for under $100!
A successful day and I’ll post more on this soon as we install it permanently next week, and do a few more tests on it with aerials, but I can’t fault it so far.