marcdota I will get the best signal from a stock ASIAir Pro if it's horizontal (big logo pointing facing the sky)
It will depend on other factors too, such as proximity to other metallic things. For example, even with the ASIAIR strapped to the tripod leg, the OTA above it will still move over the night and that will change the interference pattern too.
The problem is that it is hard to model since the signal is coming from a few slits from the ASIAIr box, and each slit is much smaller than a quarter wavelength (if not for that, the ASIAIR signal would have been fine). Under normal circumstances, you can use antenna modeling programs; I had written one for MacOS X: http://www.w7ay.net/site/Manuals/cocoaNEC/index.html
The best thing you can do is to measure it with some Android apps. iOS is too security conscious to allow such measurement tools, but ere are plenty of Android ones that you can use.
The real reason I did my earlier measurements was to illustrate the very deep nulls when the ASIAIR is re-oriented, and not so much to pinpoint where the nulls are. It was done as a warning to others not to mount the ASIAIR on an OTA and depend on its wireless signals. If you hit one of these nulls during the night, you are going to randomly lose signal.
Whether it affects you depends on your RF environment. If you are on a 5 acre property and the neighbors don't use WiFi routers that have excessively strong signals, you will have less problem than an apartment dweller who can see multiple WiFi routers. Many microwave ovens use the 2.4 GHz ISM band, and just cooking food, or your cup of coffee can cause the ASIAIR signal to be lost.
Half of the problem is the transmitted signal, but the other half is the received signal. Because of the Faraday cage, the WiFi radio is also deaf on the received end. We are just lucky that there is something called the Reciprocity Theorem in radio theory which states that an antenna has the same response (patterns, gain, etc) for receiving and for transmitting. The transmitting side can be more affected by VSWR (mismatch that causes the transmit power to be throttled) and I suspect a metal enclosure around the antenna is causing problems there too.
Your best bet is to use a WiFi extender that is connected directly to the ASIAIR's LAN port; this way you bypass the shielded antenna completely. If you have house power at the telescope, you can use just about any WiFi router to extend your signal. If not, you will need to use something like a "travel router" like the one by TP-Link which can be operated from 5V supply (I definitely do not recommend Vonets; stick to manufacturers who has been doing it for some time).
In my case, my ASIAIR is inside an ABS box that is left outdoors with my try-pier. Both are left outdoors 24/7. Inside the box is also an eero 6 mesh router that is connected directly to the ASIAIR. The eero is powered by a 9V USB Power Delivery adapter, and that router forms part of my home's mesh network when it is powered on. It is not really an extender, but part of the mesh network itself, using a separate band to pass backbone signals to other mesh nodes.
Chen
