Greetings,
I have made the modification described below (a couple years ago) using the Radio Shack antenna etc... Works great at my home. I recently did the same thing at a beach house for my sister thinking that I would get more than adequate range, i.e., need approx. 30 or 40 yrds so that the motion sensors at the head of the driveway will trigger various lights after dark. The range I get is maybe 20 yards. At my home setup I get at least three times that. The beach house setup has the antenna in the attic (just like home). The duct work and other points of interest for RF interference are behind the antenna which is pointing down the driveway (actually I tried all sorts of orientations with no effect on range) with no visible evidence of anything that should interfere with RF reception. Here is the strange part. I can get more than adequate range in the back of the house, i.e., probably 70 yards to the end of the pier. From this orientation the RF signal is going through a heat pump and a mass of duct work. So it seems that the range test results are the exact inverse of what one should expect. Anybody got any ideas?
Certainly it is no surprise that CM15A antenna modifications are required. I thought I was employing a proven brute force solution. Oh, well. I have reviewed many threads here and am currently considering something like the RF transceivers, e.g.,
http://www.wgldesigns.com/v572.html. I suspect one of these in the garage may give me the range I need to pickup the triple redundant MS16A configuration that is a mere 30 or 40 yards away. Unfortunately the beach house is a 6 hour drive and it would be nice to know that this will work before making the trip and spending another wad of cash on antenna HW. Any thoughts? Anybody?
FWIW - I have also setup of a DX7000 based system at the aforementioned beach house and I haven't witnessed any RF problems around the house with this system.
TIA,
Billaban