Time Machine fails with drive connected to Airport Extreme

First of all, I've had myriad problems with Time Machine, even when it was connected directly to my MBP. But after the recent updates, I installed them and hoped it would work wirelessly. I re-formatted my 120GB OWC drive (my MBP has 30GB available of 120GB). I have already been down the road of making sure I've formatted the drive correctly.
I excluded my system folder, my entourage identity, downloads, and my Parallels Windows XP file from the backup. I connected the drive to my Airport Extreme (not the gigabit version) and started the backup. Basically, it gets about 5 GB into the backup, moving very slowly, and then fails, saying that it couldn't locate the drive. And that part is true--I can't seem to locate the drive on my network anymore either. And eventually, after another hour or so, my Airport Extreme drops as well, and isn't even available. Even when I unplug the AE, and plug it back in, it still doesn't show up...but after about an hour or so...it pops back up and is available, working fine. My iPhone sees the same problem with AE dropping and then coming back. When the wireless service drops, I can plug an ethernet cable into the AE and I can access the internet fine, so it's not the cable modem (Time Warner).
Is anyone else seeing this problem? I'm no guru and appreciate that Macs just seem to work correctly. But Time Machine is making me pull my hair out. It's been an unmitigated disaster from start to finish.
Appreciate any help!

This is probably the most sensible post I've read on the issue. I've spent the last 2 days trying to get my 500GB LaCie Quadra hard drive to work with my Airport Extreme (the square one, yes .
I've formatted it correctly with the Disk Utility (multiple times!).
Airport Utility sees it just fine. I can back up to it when it is connected directly to my MacBook via USB.
But when the drive is connected via USB to the Airport Extreme, Time Machine doesn't see it -- unless I turn on file sharing with guest access read and write. That seems less-than-secure to me even if my network is protected.
Without guest access the drive appears in the shared section of the Finder, but I can't connect to it. I've tried all three combinations under "Secure Shared Disks" but none of them work.
Seems like its just too flaky to use an external disk connected to the Airport Extreme.
Happy to be pointed in the right direction... are there specific file permissions I should be setting my external drive to?
Thanks,
Rich

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