Bird-side stock antenna orientation questions

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Hey guys,

A happy customer of the FPVLR Stage 2 kit, I flew out to 3600 feet yesterday (personal best) in an area with quite a lot of RF interference. I have a couple of questions about the antennas on the bird side, hoping someone can help...

* The two 2.4GHz 1" square panel antennas are mounted on the left and right sides of the bird, pointing out. Does that mean you get better video range when flying the bird out sideways, i.e. with the left or right side of the bird facing you?

* The two 5.8GHz control dipole antennas are mounted vertically on diagonally opposite legs. Since dipoles have nulls coming out of the top and bottom, that makes flying directly up quite difficult. For high altitude flights, would it work to change the orientation of one (or both) of the dipoles so that it's horizontal and parallel to the ground? This is trivial to do, you can just pull the antenna out of the leg and tape it below the battery or above the gimbal.

Cheers!
 
CloudsNeverDie said:
... * The two 5.8GHz control dipole antennas are mounted vertically on diagonally opposite legs. Since dipoles have nulls coming out of the top and bottom, that makes flying directly up quite difficult. For high altitude flights, would it work to change the orientation of one (or both) of the dipoles so that it's horizontal and parallel to the ground ?
If you mount the 5.8ghz dipoles horizontally, and the ground too I assume, then when they are rotated 90 degrees, you will get another adverse effect.

Perhaps... make each dipole point a bit towards the camera at a slight angle of .. oh.. lets say 25 degrees.
Then one dipole might favor a more-so optimal ground antenna orientation.
 
FPVLR said:
Yes you do ....
matter of fact... if you take them out and aim them fore and aft your mileage will double or almost double.

Thanks for confirming! I tested this out today and broke my distance record, flying out to 4600 feet at 100 feet altitude in an area with lots of RF interference :) I lost the control signal at that point but still had video. Then the Phantom went into RTH mode, and as soon as it turned to point me, I lost video :/ Now I want to move my 2.4GHz antennas to the fore and aft. Or maybe I should just upgrade to Stage 3 ;)
 

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