paul,
6am here 🙂 i live at the intersection of belfast, madrid & luxembourg… take a guess !
yes, to improve coverage the only way is hard optim. Unless you forgot to declare the neighboring relationship with the best server that covers this area..? That would be the only possibility.
now, wait… there is one “soft” way to improve coverage:
frequency diversity : activate hopping with more than 4 hopping channels spaced by more than 1MHz each, and that will reduce the effects of fast fading. That’s the theory, now i’ve never measured the effect myself. I used to activate FH in remote area to enhance coverage, but in such area there is not much fast fading. Anyway, it’s still better than doing nothing. I could say I tried 🙂
regards
pix