First FPV and some questions

[JesterR1]

I finally got my first FPV flight completed un-edited. Sorry for the first minute of nothing, wanted to show I waited a good bit to make sure I had full GPS lock...if you have seen my other recent posts, my flyaway has me skeptical.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUk4C6SvxZU[/youtube]

Some things I have questions about:
Im powering the gimball and the Boscam 400mW TX off of the stock phantom battery. At most I'm getting 6 minutes of easy flying. Did I go overkill with the 400mW? Would going to 200 mW save me any sort of noticeable battery life/flight time? Perhaps I should get a small battery to power the gimball and the TX instead and save the main battery for flying? I know extra weight adds to things as well, just wanted to fly more!

The stock antennas really do not do well, and I have some skew planars set to arrive tomorrow. Will I notice a big impact? I have the diversity receiver with dual antennas. For now I'm going to put one skew on and leave the other as a stock antenna. What kind of range can i expect with the skews? Should I bother spending the money for a heliaxial? Based on my battery time, I'm not sure I can go farther than a couple hundred meters.

Thanks for the help!

 

[JesterR1]

Well I answered my own questions and figured I'd share here for anyone else who might not know.

On the Boscam TX box, the channel selector switches position is indicated by the black box, not the white. Example, channel 1 all selectors should be up or in the ON position. My initial setup I had set the switches incorrectly and was losing signal after 20-30m. Also found that the first 4 channel setups are the strongest on the TS353, while channels 5-8 put out less power.(according to info I found on here)

The skew planars are rock solid to at least 300m for this setup. I'm sure I could go farther with more battery power. Unfortunately I'm only getting about 5.5 minutes of flying time before the red flashing starts.