what does this?

[kloner]

I'm heading out to my river house in a few weeks and want to start dialing this in so the trip isn't a tune all weekend kinda thing. Left my goggles inside the house to make it as bad as possible and put a camera on one of the screens. took it outside and flew it. The part where i go down a hill is behind dirt and huge trees.

I ordered a set of the cloverleaf antenas, but am curious if this is reception suckin ***, wifi pollution or if it's what you guys are calling "junk" from the power. Any insight is appreciated.

 

[kloner]

wired the tx setup with a seperate 2s to see if there was any difference and there wasn't much, except then for whatever reason acts like the gyro and flap switches were moved, i assume lost signal? crazy...... whatever it is keeps bringing up the setup menu. just unhooked the wires that do that and will try again.

the cloverleaf ant get here tomorrow. seems like most my problem is interferrence. happens behind thicker trees or down below and behind stuff. up high looks fine

 

[kloner]

well that was interesting. Went from bad to worse screwing with it till all of a sudden i kinda figured it out. Had the rubber duck antenae pointing down hanging off the bottom of this thing and the legs i put on it are deflecting the crap out of the signal. i put the tx in the middle with the naza pointed the ant up and walla, like this now. The cloverleafs show up tomorrow, but at least i got somewhat a handle on it i guess. This 5.8 doesn't do very good going down below the rx. I guess the trees are somewhat a prob, but eveytime i drop down a little out of los is almost impossible to see through, same said trees but up high almost doesn't matter. At this point i still have a bit of an issue with the battery being in the way of los, will see if the new tips make a difference and plan it out from there. Where it goes out is down 30-40 feet. This is back on the flight pack 4s for power to the tx. Got a plug though now and a grip of 2s 450 that velcro to the back of the camera so will bring all that to my adventure

 

[RCNut]

Hi kloner.

5.8GHz is line of sight so it doesn't take much to reduce the signal. If the antenna is mounted under the Quad you'll need to make sure it's always above your receiver otherwise there'll be some shading. If you fly into a valley you might be in trouble Also the legs are carbon fibre so they'll also act as a shield to the signal. Apart form that the signal did quite well for standard dipoles considering.

As you've seen my antenna is on a mast above the Quad so it's always in the clear.

What's the power of your transmitter? Mine is 200mw but I'm thinking up switching to a 600mw sometime soon.

 

[kloner]

this is the 600mw

Thanks for the advice, Think i need an extension to get mine up like yours

 

[kloner]

here it is with the rhcp cloverleafs. alot less junk but it still hates the chainlink fence and down the hill. but the majority of it's gone. Guess i'll try it like this

 

[RCNut]

The issue with losing signal as you go down the hill is simply an effect of using 5.8 GHz and no antenna will improve it beyond what youre getting. Dirt, rock, stone blocks and buildings will all attenuate the signal at 5.8 GHz. A few trees usually wont matter much (except perhaps at maximum range) and the cloverleafs will help improve reception in those circustances but avoid going behind large solid objects.

Since your goggles are in the house and the house wall is also blocking some of the signal Id say youre doing pretty well. If you were wearing them you'd have 100% reception over your entire flight.

If you need to regularly fly out of line-of-sight you might want to consider 900 MHz which is less affected by solid objects.

 

[kloner]

Thanks for the info. Does the 900 junk look different? is it less?

When using the 900, do the higher mw tx's have a smaller target to hit? when does tracking become necessity? do the cloverleaf type ant work on thes too or is there a different way to do it?

The area i'm going is a proving ground for the military. just hoping i don't get shot down, but is wide open space, no trees, but there is washes and small hills along side the washes i'm a little worried about. If i was gonna get down in a wash, am i better off standing down in the bottom of the wash or up the hill along the side of it? the hill would have no trees between us, down in the bottoms would have 20' mesquite trees around me
View attachment 2847
View attachment 2848

 

[RCNut]

You'll get a bit less interference around obstacles at 900 MHz and you'll probably get slightly more range as well but your cloverleaf will be much larger (about 5 inches across). The higher you go in frequency the more effect obstacles will have on the reception.

At 5.8 GHz the signal is like light radiating outwards from a light bulb. Any objects in the path will cast a shadow. If the object is close and not too large some light will refract around it near the edges but large objects will cast a very dark shadow where no light penetrates. Try to avoid flying in the dark shadows. Remember your radio control signal also gets affected. If your radio runs at 2.4 GHz then you'd generally expect to lose your 5.8 GHz video signal first. If your video is on 900 MHz it could happen the other way around (depending on the power of your video TX).

As for your flying location, with any radio signal, height is usually everything so you'll generally be better off flying from the hill than the wash. The best view will usually give you the best radio signal as long as you stay within range.

 

[kloner]

Thanks! I'll make sure to bring some wild vids

 

[kloner]

RCnut, what is holding your rx cloverleaf up in the air like that? i ordered a 30cm extension and another set of the cloverleafs, the ones without coax, just tips. how to?

 

[RCNut]

I'm using a short length of fiberglass rod (like you'd find at the tip of a fishing rod) and I've cable-tied the antenna cable to it. The rod pushes into a small socket I've fitted to the f450 arm so I can remove it for transportation.

 

[kloner]

good stuff! thanks again