Hey guys. New to the forum and fairly new to the Phantom. I got mine about 2 months ago and have been flying quite a bit since. I've been thinking about extending the range of my Vision but don't really want to go any further than what I can see in FPV. I live in an area where nobody sells or services the Phantom. How would I go about extending the range on the drone itself and also extending the FPV. Now I just use the app on my phone with all of the stock equip. I get between 800-1200 ft before I lose video feed. I don't know the first thing about putting new antennas on everything or how to get started. Should I do it myself or send it somewhere? Would also love to have a good monitor at some point. Would appreciate some advice on how to get going on all of this. Thanks for help.
Extending Range
- Thread starter Nilo80
- Start date
Welcome to the forum!
There is a stickey that will help you for mods.
Just curious, what wifi range extender came with your bird?
MHL
It's pretty easy even if you never done anything like it before, you just have to get the right parts i just finished modding my extender in my p2v all you need is a U.FL to RP-SMA antenna WiFi cable and of course the antenna which is pretty easy to find, you can even use the one that comes with your router if it has more than one.
theres a video in youtube that shows how to http://youtu.be/aEHzDi4hHKU which leads me to my next question.. i got a 18dbi high gain antenna for this mod, but its kinda long, dont know if it's a good idea to use it or just overkill, can someone advice?
theres a video in youtube that shows how to http://youtu.be/aEHzDi4hHKU which leads me to my next question.. i got a 18dbi high gain antenna for this mod, but its kinda long, dont know if it's a good idea to use it or just overkill, can someone advice?
Thanks for the replies. I will watch the video and see if that will get me started. As far as which extender came with my phantom I assume it's the RE500.
dirkclod
Premium Pilot
Ok. So I think I can add the new antenna to the range extender. Seems pretty straightforward. What about extending the range of the actual drone? What range should I be getting? I pushed it once to see how far I could get and I got about 1200 yards before I lost contact and it entered RTH mode. Does that sound about right? What antenna would give me the best range and what kind of range could I hope for?
You can do the same mod to the main antenna and get longer ranges, I've seen people doing 2km without any issue, but to be honest let me ask you something, are you rich? can you afford to buy another phantom if something happens to your actual device? if you're then nvm, but if you aren't why would you risk it? i see lot of people doing insane ranges with the phantom and then crying cause of a flyaway or sudden loss of battery people seem to ignore than every time the battery is used charge / discharge actually dies a little bit, so after 30 cycles the battery life is about 90% so if you were used to 20 mins flights now you only get about 15 minutes, so you're flying your phantom 1km away from you thinking you still have enough juice to return home, and out of nowhere it starts auto landing.. away from you and game is over, id rather fly safe set limits and fly in areas where i can actually see it and still be able to recover it if something wrong happens.
I agree and understand all of that. I don't want to push it past what is smart. But I've had it return to home at 600 yards before. Id like to get further than that before it loses connection. I was mainly just wondering what range I should be getting with the stock equip and how to extend it a little more.
As you know I'm sure there are two signals here. One for controlling the craft and the Video feed. (FPV)
In my experience with a stock unit the control signal out distances the FPV signal. I would get about 800' FPV then lose connection. However, I was still able to fly the craft. I changed the range extender to the RE700 and ran a distance test. I got 1017' when the control signal was lost but, I still had FPV. Completely stock otherwise. The RE700 does extend the FPV range. I don't know what its maximum range is since the control signal goes first.
This is basically what I wanted. I wanted the FPV to match or better the control signal, which it now does. I primarily fly LOS.
Geo
In my experience with a stock unit the control signal out distances the FPV signal. I would get about 800' FPV then lose connection. However, I was still able to fly the craft. I changed the range extender to the RE700 and ran a distance test. I got 1017' when the control signal was lost but, I still had FPV. Completely stock otherwise. The RE700 does extend the FPV range. I don't know what its maximum range is since the control signal goes first.
This is basically what I wanted. I wanted the FPV to match or better the control signal, which it now does. I primarily fly LOS.
Geo
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