Telescope Reviews: AirCable troubles

I recently purchased an AirCable Serial 3 unit, which I am trying to make use of. I am powering it from a brand-new 9-volt battery. I am using a Windows XP Professional SP3 computer for the connection. It has a Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of memory, so I think it's up to the job. I've successfully connected it to my PDA using Bluetooth, so I think that side is good.

I've got the AirCable DIP switches set to 9600 baud and no handshake.

At first, it appears that I connect OK with the AirCable unit. That is:

When I establish the Bluetooth connection, the blue LED on the unit illuminates steadily.
In "My Bluetooth Places", the "AIRserial3X 49721 SPP" icon says "Connected".
In the status bar, the text reads: Connected to AIRserial3X 49721 using Virtual COM port 7

So all that looks good, right?

However, I can't seem to establish a serial link to anything. First I tried connecting to my Garmin GPS unit. The host program (MapSource) can't find the GPS. I assume it should look at COM 7, right? And when I try to make ASCOM connect to my CPC800 on COM 7, I get the "Blue Screen of Death."

Also, the connection to the AirCable unit seems to be very unstable. That is, I can connect OK, as I said above, but in a matter of 30 seconds to a minute or two, the connection is lost, and the blue LED begins to blink again awaiting a new connection. Which I can easily establish again.

I notice that the signal strength indicator seems to vary quite a bit (dipping quite low sometimes), even though the AirCable unit and PC remain in fixed positions.

Any clues what I'm doing wrong here?

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