It was bound to happen… I’ve acquired a strange obsession with flying as far away as i can.
I’ve got the Iflight crystal directional DJI antennas which are amazing. But wierdly its my ELRS which is giving out too soon. I feel the antenna of my Happy Model EP1 is a bit hidden, much of it is within the carbon fibre frame, with half of the ends of the wire outside, so I might move it. Is this even a good choice for long range? Can I upgrade the antenna?
So now I’m looking at the TX settings of my Boxer. Obvs 1000mw power, but what about the packet rate? I’m not worried about latency for cruising. Its currently set at 250hz, and struggling to get past 2km range (this could have been due to trees in the LOS) Could I go down to 50hz?
Carbon is electrically conductive, so your carbon fibre frame may have the effect of blocking the signal transmission. Therefore you are correct to move the aerials outside the frame. (And ensure they are insulated from it.)
2km should be way within range, and basically with ELRS or (Crossfire for that matter), if the video isn’t cutting out WAY in advance of a failsafe (I assume that’s whats happening?), then there is a config/setup issue.
the 1W output is for the TX, the RX will have a lot lower power rating for sending telem back to the radio, but it won’t FS. I can’t remember what the EP1 does, but I believe there are 100mw RX to send the data back. If you want more and more LR, might be worth looking into the true diversity RXs with 2 antennas, etc. (I say true, as some are only antenna diversity, not two radios).
For the best best then the new gemini might be worth looking into, however that’s for noisy environments, and 2.4 ELRS has been shown to go 100km!!, I believe the new 900 Vardy (or someone else) went 180km.
Lower the packet rate a bit yeah, and maybe look at a new RX, RXs aren’t expensive and the newer RadioMaster ones are great (though I have a lot of happymodel ones too, and all been fine)
Thanks so much for this… those diversity rxs do look good. I’ll lower the packet rate and reposition the antenna outside the frame, then I reckon the goggle connection will be the weak link.
What I really need is to not get obsessed with it!
