Howdy, hope someone can give me a good understand of how something works in our DJI Remote Controller to Drone operations, specifically related to range vs RC Channel availability.
I typically fly my Phantom 4 in the city or suburbs, near places that have a lot 2.4 GHz activity. I can tell this because when I look a the channel screen on my Go app I'll see red lines of activity on all channels most of the time. However, I've always been able to take off and fly...
Now, as a specific example: I take off from my back yard and there is a little path I can take that doesn't go over anyone so I can test things out, among then just simple range testing. Between where I take off and where I go are some tall trees. In my past experiences, put just a couple trees between me and my drone and it's signal over. Notably, far less than I've seen in many online videos. I mean that I am at barely 1000 feet and lose connection because 3-5 trees (tops, not through the middle thickness) are between me and my drone, LOS. I had just accepted that as such.
Yesterday was on a movie set doing some filming, we were out in the boonies! Checking my channels, one channel had one red flicker and the rest were empty. There was no radio traffic out here! And out here was in a thickly forested area, with a small lake, and then some really hills with more trees. Keeping all this in mind my I notified the director - but he needed some shots at some distance (1-2 miles) - we agreed to just try and see what would happen. I wasn't optimistic.
Aaaaannnd we're off... flying here flying there... zing zing ... 1 mile... 2 miles... hell, lets try this... 3 miles... No problemo. Not a drop out to be seen =-= and all the time I've got trees in between me and drone. (shhhh, no Vlos, too many leaves). The take away is, here I am flying with my signal just blazing right through trees as thick or thicker than those at home and at distances I've never hit (other than over open water) before without issue.
From this I came back thinking: my range limitations are then far more to do with what's going on with the channels and availability within them than with signal strength passing through trees.
OK, sorry for the long winded intro but I wanted to be clear what I assumed and what I did to challenge the ideas. So, can someone please give me a good description of how "channels" "work" in/with the DJI Remote/DJI Go 4 app. i.e., are individual channels like long COAX (10Base-2 coaxial not 10Base-10 twisted pair) Ethernet cable runs and the RC is acting like a hub (Ethernet hub (suspect to collisions, not like a switch (point-to-point))? What explains what I experienced? Why would a busy channel cause signal loss, wouldn't it just repeat? Etc.
Thank you for your time in advance!
I typically fly my Phantom 4 in the city or suburbs, near places that have a lot 2.4 GHz activity. I can tell this because when I look a the channel screen on my Go app I'll see red lines of activity on all channels most of the time. However, I've always been able to take off and fly...
Now, as a specific example: I take off from my back yard and there is a little path I can take that doesn't go over anyone so I can test things out, among then just simple range testing. Between where I take off and where I go are some tall trees. In my past experiences, put just a couple trees between me and my drone and it's signal over. Notably, far less than I've seen in many online videos. I mean that I am at barely 1000 feet and lose connection because 3-5 trees (tops, not through the middle thickness) are between me and my drone, LOS. I had just accepted that as such.
Yesterday was on a movie set doing some filming, we were out in the boonies! Checking my channels, one channel had one red flicker and the rest were empty. There was no radio traffic out here! And out here was in a thickly forested area, with a small lake, and then some really hills with more trees. Keeping all this in mind my I notified the director - but he needed some shots at some distance (1-2 miles) - we agreed to just try and see what would happen. I wasn't optimistic.
Aaaaannnd we're off... flying here flying there... zing zing ... 1 mile... 2 miles... hell, lets try this... 3 miles... No problemo. Not a drop out to be seen =-= and all the time I've got trees in between me and drone. (shhhh, no Vlos, too many leaves). The take away is, here I am flying with my signal just blazing right through trees as thick or thicker than those at home and at distances I've never hit (other than over open water) before without issue.
From this I came back thinking: my range limitations are then far more to do with what's going on with the channels and availability within them than with signal strength passing through trees.
OK, sorry for the long winded intro but I wanted to be clear what I assumed and what I did to challenge the ideas. So, can someone please give me a good description of how "channels" "work" in/with the DJI Remote/DJI Go 4 app. i.e., are individual channels like long COAX (10Base-2 coaxial not 10Base-10 twisted pair) Ethernet cable runs and the RC is acting like a hub (Ethernet hub (suspect to collisions, not like a switch (point-to-point))? What explains what I experienced? Why would a busy channel cause signal loss, wouldn't it just repeat? Etc.
Thank you for your time in advance!
