Antenna cable

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Okay, I admit it may seem silly.
Considering an AVL58. Is it reasonable to run a cable from the receiver antenna to the receiver to increase antenna height? My particular application is stationary and the distances I need are only about 350 meters maximum to my Phantom 2. But there are some obstacles in the LOS. With about 10’ of cable I could get a antenna about 30’ in the air which would clear the LOS. Has any one tried this or am I barking up the wrong tree?
 
Oh well, after doing some research of my own, it seems it is not feasible to use more than a few inches of cable with a 5.8 ghz signal because of signal loss.
 
Nothing to stop you running a long VIDEO cable from the receiver to the monitor though...

As you say, with microwave frequencies, the shorter the cable the better, but you can do 10M on some nice meaty cable without to much loss.
 
noiseboy72,
Thanks for the reply. I am currently setup in the second story living room area where I live. It has a high ceiling and I have placed my PC Ground Station's ground antenna high up on a piece of furniture. This gives it an altitude of about 23' above the place outside where I launch my Phantom 2. I have found that even going through the roof, the 2.4ghz signal (of the PC Ground Station) stays connected to my phantom at 250+ meters. But I need FPV.
Lightbridge (seems to me anyway) is more "bleeding edge" than leading edge at this time. Besides, it doesn't work with PC Ground Station anyway. So... I was hoping to install the antenna for a 5.8ghz FPV receiver to the roof ridge vent and run a cable down to the receiver through the ceiling a few feet below.
I only fly over my own property so I was hoping to have FPV from the comfort of my upstairs. This is for home security purposes. (I can even launch the Phantom from a window. Imagine what a intruder would think seeing a Phantom 2 looking at him.)
noiseboy72 said:
As you say, with microwave frequencies, the shorter the cable the better, but you can do 10M on some nice meaty cable without to much loss.
Do you mean an antenna cable? If so, can you recommend a cable I could try?

Thanks again for the reply.
 
http://www.pasternack.com/images/ProductPDF/RG218-U.pdf

This will do 5Ghz @ 10M or so. You will need to ensure you match your antennae to the cable, so you may need some advice to do this. Suggest you use N-Type connectors as this are OK at 5GHz.

You would normally use a short pig tail to step down from this cable to an SMA connector, but buy this ready terminated, as it will be tricky to make and test.

However, if you mount the RX in a waterproof box, you only need a few inches of cable to the antennae, and then a combined video and power cable to run down to your ground station. This is very cheap to buy and will not suffer any signal loss over that distance.

I used to use 5.8GHz wifi kit for temporary site links and voip, and found that short RF cables, waterproof boxes for the routers and long network cables gave me the best reliability.
 
Thank you so much for the reply and very interesting advice. Sounds a lot more feasible now. The waterproof box trick sounds really interesting also. Thanks again for your help.

Russell
 

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