Bought my first p3p in 2015, still have it and a p3a and a
p4p, well I have always been scared of seeing how far they can go, but I got the p3a to 1 mile today and still had good conection, just sharing cause I an excited
Here's a thread I posted a few years ago on this subject, but I was comparing P3P with GL300A to the P4 GL300C. I've concluded the GL300C is the weakest lightbridge RC DJI has produced. To get over a mile with P4 you had to upgrade the antenna, or simply buy an Inspire controller GL658A which has good output for control signal, which I did, and still have. That craft is for sale now.
With the P3P, the first signal to disconnect during flight is the video signal, which was usually 2 to 3mi away (using windsurfer) with LOS connection. I was always impressed with that range, always running out of battery at those distances (I have good eyes). But when I lost video, if I had LOS connection, I still had control of the craft, blindly. So I would simply ascend a couple hundred feet and my video would usually come back. That was the indicator I have reached my max distance.
There are some settings in the P3P that can increase range. One was to enable channels 30 and 31, which is what I would always fly. I forget how to enable it, but I'm sure you can find that info in this forum with a search. The other setting I remember is the setting for "Transmission Quality". If you turn that down to 4mbps instead of using 10mbps, using the custom channel option, you can get more range, because the craft has less video data to transmit to the controller.
The P4 it was a different disconnect sequence, a disappointing one. The craft would always lose the control and video signal together, not just video. So it would go directly into RTH, due to control signal loss. This would happen at 1 mile usually (with windsurfer), which was very disappointing range. The interesting part is when control sign is lost, the video also goes out simultaneously, unlike the P3P. RTH's always made me nervous, hoping it would come home, 3min of anxiety! I really hated that occurring all the time, when with my P3P I never had an auto RTH occur when I lose video signal at 2 miles, I could still ascend to reconnect and stay in control. The best solution found to improve P4 range was using the Inspire GL658A controller, which had much better output, as measured in the above thread. With the Inspire controller, the P4 turned into the same experience as the P3P, similar range and disconnect sequence.
The
P4P is a great craft. With 5.8ghz it will do 3 miles or more (with windsurfer). Using 2.4 is anemic like the P4. If it wasn't for the 5.8Ghz option in
P4P, I would have sold that craft by now, but because of the 5.8Ghz, and the ability to modify flight parameters using 1.3.509 firmware, I have two of them.
