Cisco 3602i in Autonomous Mode

Recently, I decided to upgrade my wireless access point. I considered CISCO AIR-CAP3602I-A-K9 and AIR-CAP3602E-A-K9. The 3602e looked a little fragile and I decided to go with 3602i with internal antennas.

Bought the access point on ebay and it came configured in lightweight mode. The problem was that it kept searching for the controller (WLC) and since there was none it would get new IP address from DHCP every 10 seconds, which wouldn't let me upload new image. The error was something like "could not discover wlc using dhcp ip. renewing dhcp ip". I set the access point to static IP, but after it was not able to find WLC it switched back to DHCP. Then I set address of the WLC so it would not search for it. It was still trying to connect to the non-existing WLC, but it did not interfere with uploading new image.

I used local connection to the access point through the console port while the access point was also connected to LAN. After setting the IP addresses I saved installed image to my tftp server, just in case, and uploaded new image. The commands below are not the exact session I went through, rather a list of all the commands I used:

en
lwapp ap ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0
debug capwap console cli
config terminal
interface BVI1
ip address 10.10.10.99 255.255.255.0
exit
archive tar /create tftp://10.10.10.119/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.124-25e.JA1.tar flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.124-25e.JA1
archive tar /xtract tftp://10.10.10.119/ap3g2-k9w7-tar.153-3.JAB.tar flash:
config terminal
boot system flash:/ap3g2-k9w7-mx.153-3.JAB/ap3g2-k9w7-mx.153-3.JAB
exit
reload

The access point rebooted in autonomous mode and I followed the instructions in "Cisco Aironet Access Points Configuration Guide for Cisco IOS Software" to configure the desired settings.

Tested WiFi speed and it was good, but this access point seems to loose signal strength quickly: my iPhone cannot see the network just a couple of walls away, where I was still getting signal with my old access point. Perhaps I should have used the version with external antennas...