I thought some of you might be interested in my cardboard box antenna booster mod. My refurbished Samsung Pro 10.1 works great but was too big to mount easily so I got to thinking. I noticed that it was exactly the same size (10x7x5.25) as some amazon A3 boxes I had laying around. So what if I housed the controller in a box, cut some oval holes in the sides for hand access, put the tablet on top, and mounted another bottomless box on top to corral the tablet and act as a sunshade? Using some foam blocks, hot glue, packing tape, and velcro I whipped up a prototype - and it worked!
Next I thought - why can’t I mount some patch antennas on the front of the box and increase the range? I took off the handle and drilled out the holes for my 2.4 connectors, which are level and centered with the front of the box when the controller is mounted tilted back. Then I got a couple of those ALFA black paddle style antennas ($20/pr). They screw through the front of the box onto the fittings and then tilt back 90 degrees to each side held by some more Velcro. That leaves room in the middle for the 5.8g 14dB patch antenna ($12) which is mounted upside down so the short 5 inch cable can reach inside to the fitting which I mounted near the stock antenna hole. I used 7 inch coax cables. I know it sounds funky and a picture would help to explain it better, but it works like gangbusters and costs less than $50 to build. Signals are strong and I recently went 7367 feet (over water) with an all green signal trail by Healthy Drones. I still haven’t rammed it all the way out to RTH. I’m still squeamish about that. Thanks to everyone who maintains and contributes to this forum for helping me have the information and confidence to improve my P3S.
