5.8 or 2.8 ?????

[Snowwolf]

I had my P4 for 6 months and have 140 flights, all in all I felt quite content flying it, since I purchased the P4P I have had problems with total loss of signal at 500m clear line of sight distance and 113m height and RTH was initiated by itself, luckily it made it back to me.

I am now constantly looking at the signal meter when flying and it is constantly keeps dropping down even though I have good line of sight and never more than 400m away, the meter is always dropping and quite often to one bar, which in turn starts to put me on edge and changing positions of the RC to try get signal to improve, all the times I have flown the P4P it has been set on 5.8GHz has anyone else had these same problems on the same setting ?

When I get the chance to fly again I will be setting it to 2.8 to see if I still get the same signal loss.

 

[F3honda4me]

I noticed mine switches from 5.8ghz to 2.4ghz on its own if I recall, does yours not do that when the signal gets weak?

 

[Snowwolf]

I noticed mine switches from 5.8ghz to 2.4ghz on its own if I recall, does yours not do that when the signal gets weak?

I have not seen it switching, in the menu it gives me the option of selecting 2.4 or 5.8 no option to select auto

 

[F3honda4me]

Hmm maybe I am mistaken then. I'll have to check next flight.

 

[Snowwolf]

Hmm maybe I am mistaken then. I'll have to check next flight.

Mmmm perhaps you are right, I have only seen it on 5.8 on the screen and when I looked in menu you only pick one or other

 

[smiller]

I have so far been out a mile or more several times (still chicken to go further) but I've watched and I've never seen less than four bars of signal so far.

With regard to which band is best, 2.4 would be preferable if there isn't any interference (interference would be be likely in an urban area on the 2.4 GHz band) and 5.8 would be better in a noisy RF environment. So far the auto-select has seemed to work well for me.

 

[J.T.]

I'm in Europe so on the weaker radio and I kept loosing signal at around 1000m on 5.8. Interesting that it did not auto switch on my craft. Now firmly on 2.4 and no problems anymore.

 

[Snowwolf]

I don't have the option for auto swap, one or other ?

 

[Snowwolf]

Took the p4p out today and this time set it to 2.4 and not 5.8 and had no trouble with signal losses, I will not fly 5.8 until DJI sort out the problem, I flew 1.25 kilometres away with not even one bar drop in signal,
I had signal drop at 200 metres on 5.8 and also a complete loss of signal and RTH at 500 metres definitely something wrong.

 

[F3honda4me]

I don't really know that it's a problem for DJI to fix per se. 5.8 doesn't have the range 2.4 does.

 

[smiller]

Yes, 5.8 GHz has an additional 7.5 dB path loss per mile and that is significant, and in addition 5.8 will more easily attenuated by objects so will be more strictly line-of-sight. Some of the additional path loss may be mitigated by higher antenna gain on the 5.8 band plus controller RF output is a few dB higher, but bottom line 5.8 isn't going to match 2.4 at longer ranges. Where 5.8 will be superior is closer-in LOS flying in urban areas where there is a lot of congestion (and thus a high noise floor) on the 2.4 GHz band.

 

[Kman]

If you set the channel to auto that will allow the band (2.4 and 5.8) to switch between the two.