do my neighbours' wireless stations interfere?

[27 houdini's]

Is it possible that the wireless stations of my neighbours interfere with my wireless connection? I can see them with iStumbler, and they are on different channels (i'm on channel 10, they are on 13, 9, and 5)
When their stations are active it seems my signal does not get through or is unstable. One of them is an open network and it seems to 'impose' its signal pushing away mine. Or am i being silly?

Does interference robustness help in this case? its not microwaves you know

If it helps, is it possible to block them so my computer does not see them and therefore finds my own station better?

relevant airport settings:
i use 40 bit wep security
802.11 b/g compatible
channel 10

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

It may be because they're using channel 9 and you're using channel 10. That's too close -- try changing your channel to something at least 3 channels away from theirs, like channel 1 or 2.

 

[27 houdini's]

I changed the channel to 1 and after that the base station was unreachable, i had to give it a hard reset before i could configure it again. Kinda sucks doesnt it, now it only works when i set the channel to automatic. Cost me an hour to fix that and it annoys me that cannot select another channel by hand. It annoys me also that a hard reset does not seem to solve the fact that the base station is mixed up? because i still cannot handpick a channel

 

[Dusky]

When the station is unreachable wirelessly, you oughta try an ethernet cable. It's one way to switch channels when interference is doing its thing.

Switch channels... change location... enable interference robustness...