Phantom 3 STANDARD antenna upgrade

[dirkclod]

Dirkclod, I noticed you talked about putting dipoles on your phantom. Can you explain the purpose of this and how you did it, or if you already talked about it somewhere in this thread just tell me where. Interested in learning more and seeing what improvement you got from that mod, and what you actually had to change on the phantom itself to do this. Thanks for your help! Would have have never had the confidence to get the ITELITE on my P3S if it wasn't for this forum!

It's all in this thread , Somewhere in the over 600 post . I would read all of them to get an understanding of why I use them .how I installed them
and what differce it made to mine when I did it.
Skim through them and you will get an idea to what all you ask .Can't tell you where to start as I'm in this a lot
Why I did it was to have better antennas than the stock ones for more distance . What you have should be enough unless
you just want to see how far out you can go and back. That's all I do and so far that's 3.04 miles .

 

[mandalay]

Dirkclod, I noticed you talked about putting dipoles on your phantom. Can you explain the purpose of this and how you did it, or if you already talked about it somewhere in this thread just tell me where. Interested in learning more and seeing what improvement you got from that mod, and what you actually had to change on the phantom itself to do this. Thanks for your help! Would have have never had the confidence to get the ITELITE on my P3S if it wasn't for this forum!

Start looking at post #53 in this thread

 

[dirkclod]

Start looking at post #53 in this thread

Thanks Man ..didn't have a clue without rereading it all to tell him
You got a good memory

 

[Russ376]

Welcome to the forum Russ.
Don't just judge your mod from a few flights but do some tweaking .
I did these at first and helped me HOW TO: Optimize Apple device for the best DJI GO app performance | DJI Phantom Forum
There's more to this than just installing that and do read some in here in the antenna threads as this is talked about a lot.

Followed the optimization instructions, except I forgot to put in airplane mode. I don't know if it was the optimization, or if it was just flying at a different time on a different day, but I got 2.14 miles this afternoon!!! Thanks for the tip. This is with the stock cables from ITelite.

 

[mandalay]

Followed the optimization instructions, except I forgot to put in airplane mode. I don't know if it was the optimization, or if it was just flying at a different time on a different day, but I got 2.14 miles this afternoon!!! Thanks for the tip. This is with the stock cables from ITelite. [/QUOTECo

That's impressive. Congrats!

 

[TheTanger]

That's awesome. Seems like range is all about location and aiming. Tried a new spot today which is in a rural area and got 11,900 ft. or 2.25 miles! This is with only the ITElite panel & included wires.

At that range I did notice I started to have to aim more level (down) to keep good contact. Bird was going into the wind and I got a warning with 61% left to head back. Ignored it for another few hundred feet and then decided to turn around and landed with 36% still. FPV was getting a bit weak but RC was still solid at 2.25 miles!

 

[dirkclod]

Followed the optimization instructions, except I forgot to put in airplane mode. I don't know if it was the optimization, or if it was just flying at a different time on a different day, but I got 2.14 miles this afternoon!!! Thanks for the tip. This is with the stock cables from ITelite.

It's really no telling but using those setting he had in that got me more also . Glad maybe it did you too

 

[dirkclod]

That's awesome. Seems like range is all about location and aiming. Tried a new spot today which is in a rural area and got 11,900 ft. or 2.25 miles! This is with only the ITElite panel & included wires.

At that range I did notice I started to have to aim more level (down) to keep good contact. Bird was going into the wind and I got a warning with 61% left to head back. Ignored it for another few hundred feet and then decided to turn around and landed with 36% still. FPV was getting a bit weak but RC was still solid at 2.25 miles!

That's good Tanger and yea you have to have it aimed just right at that distance . You can have tree's at one mile away and be out 2 miles and be say 300' and LOS is gonna be lost because of them .There's away.. to draw that out but I don't know how to show it on the PC .
What kinda would scare me is looking at your battery 55% . You didn't start with a full battery did you .

 

[Cruizer]

That be bad

Amps are on and external batteries mounted. I'm waiting on the external battery charger from Amazon and to mount the dipoles on the bird

 

[dirkclod]

Amps are on and external batteries mounted. I'm waiting on the external battery charger from Amazon and to mount the dipoles on the bird

Will be interesting to see what you get Add you an Inspire holder on there to help keep your device centered and you will be done
Be sure and post some results and good luck Cruizer .

 

[Cruizer]

Will be interesting to see what you get Add you an Inspire holder on there to help keep your device centered and you will be done
Be sure and post some results and good luck Cruizer .

Threaded insert came in today!

 

[Cruizer]

Wife unit is pissed. She figured out I've spent more on upgrades than the standard cost

 

[dirkclod]

Wife unit is pissed. She figured out I've spent more on upgrades than the standard cost

 

[Cruizer]

Just a FYI
That is a ITelite panel mounted on a Fpvlr or Fpvcustoms
Antenna mount​

 

[dirkclod]

Just a FYI
That is a ITelite panel mounted on a Fpvlr or Fpvcustoms
Antenna mount​

I saw ..You know Tony loves it when we use his stuff with DBS's
Edit / I miss read that . Whoops

 

[Deleted member 27337]

All done, very simple.

Where did you get these thicker internal cables? The ones provided by itelite are black and super thin

 

[TheTanger]

What kinda would scare me is looking at your battery 55% . You didn't start with a full battery did you .

Actually it WAS full (charged last night), here is a link to Healthy Drones log. I was fighting a strong headwind apparently 22.5mph w/gusts to 31mph according to HealthyDrones (I don't think it's 100% accurate though) on the way out which KILLED my battery cause I wanted to go much further. Watching the vid I could see my props so I knew it had more attitude than usual to fight against the wind.

What's funny too is I had full control and great FPV but turned back cuz of battery concerns (I WAS gonna push for max distance until it did a RTH but got too scared)...but like 7,900' out on way back lost downlink for a few seconds. Just seemed to be a weird spot to lose it (4,000' closer than the max point) but never lost control or FPV, just a hiccup.

I can now say the ITElite is really awesome...you just need clear LOS and low interference. At the greenbelt by my neighborhood, 2,500-4500' is the norm max.

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

 

[mandalay]

That's awesome. Seems like range is all about location and aiming. Tried a new spot today which is in a rural area and got 11,900 ft. or 2.25 miles! This is with only the ITElite panel & included wires.

At that range I did notice I started to have to aim more level (down) to keep good contact. Bird was going into the wind and I got a warning with 61% left to head back. Ignored it for another few hundred feet and then decided to turn around and landed with 36% still. FPV was getting a bit weak but RC was still solid at 2.25 miles!

This is impressive as well, Tanger. I'm also in Elk Grove but I don't know why mine can't push that far. Is it me or the panel or the bird?

 

[TheTanger]

This is impressive as well, Tanger. I'm also in Elk Grove but I don't know why mine can't push that far. Is it me or the panel or the bird?

That's troubling Mandalay...what kind of range have you been getting with the panel? What kind of device too? (Still trying to rule out if that actually matters or not-I used a 2013 Nexus 7 for this flight).

 

[dirkclod]

Where did you get these thicker internal cables? The ones provided by itelite are black and super thin

They are and I did change mine and got them from Tony but I think Amazon has them also as well as other places . Don't have a link handy right now.