Homebrew IR Transmitter - almost working

[<Dac...@ne...>]

Hi,
I have built the simple IR Transmitter as described here http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html and shown here http://www.permutation.org/images/ir_transmitter.jpg.
I've installed a second instance of Lirc and I am trying to use the transmitter to change channels on my Samsung SIR-300 DTV box. (lirc config file: SIR-S300W)

When I run remote_irsend, the channel changes approx 1 out of every 3 tries.
I am holding the transmitter about an inch away from the receiver.

I'm a bit stumped as to why it would work sometimes but not others.  
Are there any settings in particular I should experiment with in the config file?


Thanks in advance
Dave


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