Hawking 7dBi Wifi Antenna free boost

I discovered the Hawking 7dBi Wifi Antenna has a flaw. By removing the flaw I got a signal boost for FREE.
the part number of the antenna is HAI7SIP.

Before this modification I had one bar of signal that sometimes dropped died completely. After the modification I now have two bars of signal. Most importantly no dropped signal anymore!

Step 1 Dissasembly

Peel back the rubber on the bottom and remove the 4 screws. Now use a putty knife or thin flat tool to pry the two parts of the actual antenna apart.

Comments

[tc998hot]

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[askjerry]

Just a guess, but I think they wanted the plastic case very thin so they designed it with the thin coaxial cable. The problem is that the cable looses much more signal per foot than the thicker cable. They made a compromise and used both cable types, the circuit board is likely just a place to solder the two wire types to for a secure connection. This connection likely has a loss of 1dB or so in addition to the coaxial loss of the thin cable. By giving up flexibility, he likely gained about 2dB of signal. (Every 3dB is 2x signal strength.) The shorter the cable the less signal loss. Higher frequency means more loss too... and this is in the GHz range so it is very lossy. Good simple fix.

[rhackenb]

What's a PCB and why is this the problem. I don't understand the principle here. Also, I would suggest that you rotate the photo on step 4 to vertical. Finally, you go to all this work to go from one bar to two? What is the max number of bars possible? Five?

[bensmith8302]

The wire used in Wifi equipment in 59Ohm cable. Its designs to be used at 2.4Ghz range. A flat printed circuit board(PCB) is not good at transmitting signals like these. So my theory is that it leaks out signal. Also any signal increase for FREE is priceless.

[cyrozap]

A PCB is a Printed Circuit Board (the green thing in the picture for step two). I also do not know how that is a problem. If it's there, the designers put it there for a reason.

[rhackenb]

You seem to indicate that the PCB is the problem: "Take the PCB and the wires out of the shell. The green PCB is the flaw! We must remove it." I figured you knew what it did.

[cyrozap]

I didn't write the instructable so I don't know. I don't even own one of these!

[Lftndbt]

That is fantastic! Could you contact me with further details?