Gen 2 Garage Door Opener inconsistency

[OhmsLoL]

Has anyone experienced changes in the Gen2 garage door opener range?

The R1S opener worked great when I first received my Gen2 R1S last August. Then it seemed to take a nose-dive with a software update. Then it bounced back and reliably worked from ~50 ft away. But for the last 3 months or so, the range and reliability have been significantly worse. Sometimes it opens the first try from 50 ft, but it mostly fails 5x in a row ~10 ft from the door.

I have a Linear unit with the stock 315 MHz remote. I've experimented with the original clicker, which works 99% of the time from 75 ft away with a 5 year old battery.
So I've resorted to doubling the unit's antenna length to increase the gain and have noticed some improvement in both range and reliability.

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[bigsky]

I don't think increasing antenna length gets you any additional gain. The antenna itself has a specific gain as it is. By increasing length, all you are doing is tuning the antenna better to another frequency (a lower frequency in this case).
The optimal gain at your opener frequency is achieved by having the length of the antenna match the frequency of it.
extremely simplistic rule: a quarter wavelength will work, or 9.3 in. for your opener. Increasing the height of antenna might give you better range.

By doubling the antenna length, you basically halved the optimal frequency.

 

[suprteck]

I have a gen 1 and my garage worked great then one day it would take several tries to open or close. Service ended up replacing the rear view mirror which contains the garage door module. Has been working since.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

On both my previous gen 1 and my current gen 2, there are occasions where the opener doesn't work, or only starts to open the door, and the door stops moving. I'm not sure why this happens, but it occurs approximately 1 out of 10 times. It also happens in my wife's BMW although it seems to occur there less frequently.

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