So, I recently bought a refurbed p3p from newegg because it was a great price and I thought it would be good to have a spare, as I'm edging towards getting into this stuff semi professionally.
The day I got it, I booted it up and updated the firmware on the AC/RC, not realizing that that very day DJI had released new firmware.
After becoming aware of this fact, much by accident, I decided this would be a perfect opportunity to try flying my new AC in the same conditions, side by side with my old AC, to see if there was any apparent performance difference in fw.
I took both units, with full charged batteries to a local hill that overlooks a good size valley, at dusk, and decided to stretch their legs.
I don't know how cluttered of a signal environment this is, as it's rural/suburban New England, but I presume moderately cluttered.
I took the new bird out first. I'd flown her around my home some the day I got it, and thought I noticed it had better signal quality, so I trusted it enough.
I started loosing signal at about 7800'. Video, but in my experience with my old unit, I seem to always lose video and RC signal simultaneously, so when video starts getting wonky, I turn back. Besides, 7800' is a distance record for me.
Put the old unit out, and I started losing signal at almost exactly a mile (5250).
Observations...
As mentioned above, I always seems to lose Tx/rx with video signal. or very shortly thereafter. As such, my personal rule is, if I don't have live feed, I bring it back until I do.
I had slightly more altitude with the old drone during the test, so I'm surprised it lost signal so much sooner.
I noticed with both drones while I had rock solid video out until the edge on the way out, both drones popped in and out till a much closer distance on the way back. due to the orientation of the antennae on the AC (?)
another oddity with my signal loss at range... I never notice a degradation of the readout before it starts getting spotty... full bars, then a wall.
My old unit was slower on the test. Flying at only about 30mph, where the new unit was doing 35-37. this could very well be due to control settings I've configured, but I don't know which ones.
Both AC landed with significant battery life remaining, as would be expected.
I'm planning on rerunning the same test, under as close to the same conditions as possible, with the Skyreat parabolic antenna reflectors next weekend, if they come in in time.
The day I got it, I booted it up and updated the firmware on the AC/RC, not realizing that that very day DJI had released new firmware.
After becoming aware of this fact, much by accident, I decided this would be a perfect opportunity to try flying my new AC in the same conditions, side by side with my old AC, to see if there was any apparent performance difference in fw.
I took both units, with full charged batteries to a local hill that overlooks a good size valley, at dusk, and decided to stretch their legs.
I don't know how cluttered of a signal environment this is, as it's rural/suburban New England, but I presume moderately cluttered.
I took the new bird out first. I'd flown her around my home some the day I got it, and thought I noticed it had better signal quality, so I trusted it enough.
I started loosing signal at about 7800'. Video, but in my experience with my old unit, I seem to always lose video and RC signal simultaneously, so when video starts getting wonky, I turn back. Besides, 7800' is a distance record for me.
Put the old unit out, and I started losing signal at almost exactly a mile (5250).
Observations...
As mentioned above, I always seems to lose Tx/rx with video signal. or very shortly thereafter. As such, my personal rule is, if I don't have live feed, I bring it back until I do.
I had slightly more altitude with the old drone during the test, so I'm surprised it lost signal so much sooner.
I noticed with both drones while I had rock solid video out until the edge on the way out, both drones popped in and out till a much closer distance on the way back. due to the orientation of the antennae on the AC (?)
another oddity with my signal loss at range... I never notice a degradation of the readout before it starts getting spotty... full bars, then a wall.
My old unit was slower on the test. Flying at only about 30mph, where the new unit was doing 35-37. this could very well be due to control settings I've configured, but I don't know which ones.
Both AC landed with significant battery life remaining, as would be expected.
I'm planning on rerunning the same test, under as close to the same conditions as possible, with the Skyreat parabolic antenna reflectors next weekend, if they come in in time.
