Antenna for Mavic

As I’m getting into FPV and I’m wondering why there’s all these fancy antenna for the goggles, but on my mavic radio there’s just these boring straight ones?

I believe the FPV goggles have omni-directional antennas, but the ones on the MP’s RC are actually very directional.
Having them correctly oriented makes an enormous difference at even short range.

Fpv uses circular polarised antennas for the fpv feed (on 5.8ghz usually). For the dji stuff your only real option is the dji goggles. Tho if your thinking about going down that route and getting into fpv later then get the race ones as they at least support 5.8ghz…

I’ve got dji goggles, and now race goggles too…! But I was more wondering about how everyone is saying to ditch the stock dipoles the race goggles came with and get a patch. I was wondering what effect that would have if I screwed it into my mavic radio?

@tom.at.rye
Have a look at this thread too.

Titan Atlas antenna mod + car kit

Yes…that looks fun but expensive and how would the batteries deal with those kind of trips anyway? That’s my limiting factor…

Then this is for you … Mavic Pro dual battery mod

I thought someone would bring that up! Naa…popping the hood to replace a leg was enough excitement for me! I don’t particularly want to go drilling holes in it!! Anyone done that successfully though?

The person in that thread … @My-Mavic-My-Rules has. 10km range with his big antenna! :wink:

I have played with antennas on my DIY race quad. From my experience a home built dipole blows away the usual ‘standard’ monopole for RC control range. Just make sure you use the same orientation at the TX and on the Quad. For FPV video, a patch antenna is good for distance and signal penetration through trees etc, but this is at the loss of the omnidirectional signal. So, if you plan to always fly in front of you the patch will offer benefits, but if you fly behind yourself, you will lose signal.

So the fpv goggles I got have two standard dole
Dipole sticks, which everyone suggests I should ditch, for a patch and…what else? Would you have two patches or one patch and one something else?

To get the best of both worlds (omni directional + directional antenna) I swapped out the Fatshark receiver all together and installed the LaForge receiver with the 2nd diversity receiver module (Home - La Forge FPV). This gives you great penetration in the front using the directional antenna (where you most need it) and an omni directional antenna for flying close by, around the back etc. To be honest, just upgrading to the LaForge receiver on an omni directional I got a big improvement over the Fatshark receiver. In fact, I would recommend trying this first and only then, if it still didn’t meet your needs, add the diversity module with a patch antenna or a 5 turn helical antenna (which was my choice). I used the IBCrazy 5.8GHz 9.5dbic 5 Turn Helical over the ‘standard Spironet patch’ as it gives slightly better performance 9.5dBi gain compared to 8dBi whilst both offer a 90 degree degree Beam Width. See here http://videoaerialsystems.com/portfolio-view/5-turn-helical-v2-lhcp-5-8ghz/ and here SpiroNET 5.8GHz 8dBi – Patch Antenna – ImmersionRC Limited

If you do go for a helical or patch make sure it has the same ‘polarisation’ as the omni directional antenna you are using on your quad’s FPV transmitter. They come if left and right polarisation. If you get it mismatched (left & right) on the same system, it will work, just not very well! I know from experience as i have tried it just to see what happened! Finally, IBCrazy (aka Alex Greve) has some great video tutorials on antennas on YouTube. He seems a great guy as well as being very knowledgeable on antennas… well worth a look.