Alfa AWUS036H 500mW high tx power

[Mexicant]

Awesome! Mine is on the way and should be here Tuesday courtesy of eBay. Crummy weather = no flying = me playing with my new toy (sts)

[DigitalStone]

Just got an AWUS036H based on the suggestions in the Remote-Exploit forums. WOW this this is great! Upgraded to BT3 and was able to use the highpower feature built right in.
What is the highest anyone has got it to safely work at? Don't want to burn it out on the first week.

[=Tron=]

Originally Posted by DigitalStone

Just got an AWUS036H based on the suggestions in the Remote-Exploit forums. WOW this this is great! Upgraded to BT3 and was able to use the highpower feature built right in.
What is the highest anyone has got it to safely work at? Don't want to burn it out on the first week.

I have been running it on the highest possible setting (35) for quite a few hours at a time during the last few days and still have not been able to brick it. I have not noticed that it would generate any more heat in this way either and really am not too concerned that it will damage it in any way.

[jkroeder]

sorry to bump an old thread but have a few questions about the topic at hand


I bumped it to 15 on my Alfa and then I tried airodump. After hitting enter, airodump doesn't actually display for about 20 seconds. Keep in mind, airodump displays instantaneously at the default txpower of 5. When it did, it couldn't pull any APs. At least, not for the minute I left it going for.
I then bumped it down to 10 and it did the same lag at the beginning but not as long. This time airodump displayed the usual list of APs but I didn't notice much of a difference from the default value of 5 which I suppose isn't surprising since it's a small bump.

Anyone else experience this 'lag' after increasing the txpower?


Also, how much difference do you actually see going from 5 to 35?

[tomksoft]

I do not any problems after setting the power of my alfa, but I do not see any changes either... Every thing seems to be working as usual and I do not see more APs than usual(and I do not see much increase in power of the APs).

[=Tron=]

Originally Posted by tomksoft

I do not any problems after setting the power of my alfa, but I do not see any changes either... Every thing seems to be working as usual and I do not see more APs than usual(and I do not see much increase in power of the APs).

The higher TX power will not increase the sensitivity, but the transmission power. This means that although you are not able to pick up any more APs, some APs that where positioned to far away earlier should be able to hear your Alfa due to the higher TX power.

[alan-smithee]

Hi everybody.

As I'm going to receive my Alfa 500 this week, I would like to know what is exactly the highpower mode : a large amount of people report that the Alfa is in full power (500 mW) at the boot of BT3. Does highpower mode allow you to put your card at a greater power than 500 mW ?

[aggtrfrad]

jkroeder: are u using bt3beta? there is a driver issue that causes the lag when the card enters monitor mode(in some cases).
about the sensitivity decrease, i've never heard or experienced something like that, txpower never affected my card in a negative way
it could be random, allthough the 0 APs does not explain that.
could be a crappy antenna, what are u using?
i had problems like that with my omni when using my laptop, antenna was very big, some times i was getting like 1/100 of sensitivity (1 or 0 APs) and I hade to touch the "negative pole" on the antenna to get my signal back, probably power issue due to laptop's usb low mw and big antenna, wired stuff

alan-smithee: i wish someone would take the time and test this amazing device with professional rf equipment to determin the output power. Unfortunately, the only results we have are the fcc results showing ~360mw@11Mbps, which is pretty good though, cause setting highpower drivers and rate to 1Mbps would be close to 500mw, and that's too much

[jkroeder]

No, I'm using the final. I don't have a problem when the Alfa is at it's default levels. I'm just using the antenna that came with it.
It's not a huge deal. The range is already pretty good and a huge improvement over my wusb54g.

[alan-smithee]

Originally Posted by aggtrfrad

alan-smithee: i wish someone would take the time and test this amazing device with professional rf equipment to determin the output power. Unfortunately, the only results we have are the fcc results showing ~360mw@11Mbps, which is pretty good though, cause setting highpower drivers and rate to 1Mbps would be close to 500mw, and that's too much

So, whenever I connect the Alfa 500 to my laptop with BT3 on it, the tx-rate is automatically set on 360 mW ?