Airport reception drops over time

[Pax]

Hi

"Original" 1.86 CoreDuo Macbook from about 2005. The problem with it is, the Airport receive signal strength seems to drop with time since it was started up. Leaving it in the same place in the house, when I start it up from sleep it has RSSI about -50 dBm. Over 10-20 minutes the RSSI drops to about -80 dBm, and the link drops. If I put it to sleep for a few seconds, still at -80. If I sleep it for ten minutes or so, we're back at about -50.

I've tried reboots and SMC resets, no significant change.

I'm guessing at best I need to tighten the antenna connections to the card, and at worst I need a new Airport card. Any thoughts?

cheers

 

[Pax]

To answer my own question, I put a new Airport card in, and it all works OK. I guess the RF front end in the old card was starting to die. I got the card used for £40 off the Web. So I'm happy. Also blew some dust out of the computer - quite surprisingly dirty in there!