Advice Needed On Range Issues

[rbhamilton]

I see other people have mentioned it too but the flat side of the WiFi repeater is where it's antenna is located. You can pivot that repeater to point at your drone. It helps with the video but not the control signal.

In the end, if you want better range you are going to need a better antenna. I changed out my little stock one (3db). I bought a 5db and a nice big fat 8db one and got much further. I went from about 300M-500M right up to 2km. I have a flat panel one on order and I hear they work even better. The trade-off is that it becomes much more directional so you need good line of sight.

You can't just order a new antenna. You need to open up the remote and change out the screw-in adapter. It's a bit tricky but lots of good Youtube help out there.

 

[nim6us]

You can't just order a new antenna. You need to open up the remote and change out the screw-in adapter. It's a bit tricky but lots of good Youtube help out there.

Good info! Did you get get a kit online to do the antenna change, or did you piece it together yourself?

 

[rrmccabe]

I see other people have mentioned it too but the flat side of the WiFi repeater is where it's antenna is located. You can pivot that repeater to point at your drone. It helps with the video but not the control signal.

Good point. And in the picture I posted the control antenna and wifi are not pointing exactly the same direction.

I added an arrow to show this in picture below.

So to recap the dipole is the (5.8ghz) signal that actually controls the Phantom. The blue arrows indicated the signal radiation direction you want to use.

The WIFI range extender (2.4ghz) radiates off the flat front shown with green arrow. This is where your video and telemetry back to your phone comes from.

There are two different messages when you lose connectivity. One is control and one is phantom (wifi).

 

[nim6us]

Hey guys, thanks to everyone and their patience, got a 3,500ft distance flight at an altitude at 200ft! I didn't push it to I lost connection, even though I know there's the fly home feature the max I was previously was 900ft distance, so I got a little antsy. I don't know if it was the antenna or WiFi position, or switching from CE to FCC.. most likely it was a combination of all of them. However this is a perfect example of how a good product gets bad reviews. If I wasn't so tenacious about tweaking my RC controls and I was a lazy person, I would have just posted a review knocking the distance capability.

Again, thanks so much to everyone who gave me feedback and helped me get this fixed, truly loving my P2V+ right now! I finally reached the church tower on the hill, and way past! Below is the video.. please excuse the music track being so on the nose, my wife picked it :lol:

[vimeo]105709729[/vimeo]

 

[flyingtim]

 

[rrmccabe]

However this is a perfect example of how a good product gets bad reviews.

Thats great news. And in all fairness to you this is common to a lot of us.

DJI has a great product but the process although documented is somewhat poorly documented.

I tell my friends that have interest in the phantom to come over and in 5 minutes I can show them more in that time than they will learn reading manuals and the forum over a week or two.

They kinda skip some basics in a few spots so the details they do talk about are lost. You just really need to understand what is going on before the rest makes any sense.

 

[Delgado]

Hey nim6us, I was having the exact same problems today, and came across your post.

I'm based down in Hayle, just down the road from you.

Has the FCC / antenna position change continued to benefit your flying? Or is the Cornish air just too thick to fly these things too far?

 

[nhoover]

Here's the process I went through with P2V+

First I installed the booster mentioned above. Stock, with that was able to get to about 7500' (sometimes a little more or less) but beyond 7000', the FPV wasn't really reliable and half the time I would lose control.

I decided to fix the control first since I don't like relying on RTH. I installed a 14 dBi patch antenna on the TX (this one: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JIKTGJO/ref ... 00_TE_item) and problem solved. To see how far it would go I flew out as far as I dared and still had control at 2.2 miles. I was watching via Flytrex live on a separate tablet with internet access. I actually got FPV on one flight out to 8500' this way, but it is not solid beyond 7000'. Here's the 2.2 mile flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7IoRbKilmw

Then I added a pair of these 7 dBi patch antennas to the repeater (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZWPRUI). I tried that out today for the first time and WOW!

1) Unboosted, 640x480@30, FPV to 8539'
2) Boosted, 320x240@15, FPV to 9878'

You can go a lot further with bigger antennas but all of these are small and cheap ($15 for the 5.8Ghz and $11 for each of the 2.4Ghz ones). Add some U.FL to RP-SMA cables and I've spent something like $55 including the $10 booster app. Battery life is going to be a problem if I push much further and I don't really have a need. So this seems like a good setup. There are various videos on how to do it and neither of these mods is hard to do or touches the quadcopter itself. Attached is a photo showing the controller with the 3 antennas. It's light and easy to hold and aim. For non-distance flying you can just slap on a simple 5dBi omni on each and fly with no issues.