You can avoid (or very soon will be able to do) all the cable runs by using a wireless link to/from your primary radio/repeaters up on your house or car roof top which are in turn communicating with the drone. www.REDbirdRF.com
You can avoid (or very soon will be able to do) all the cable runs by using a wireless link to/from your primary radio/repeaters up on your house or car roof top which are in turn communicating with the drone. www.REDbirdRF.com
I will be putting up an ad on this forum this month. hopefully by Dec 19th.How soon is soon?![]()
I will be putting up an ad on this forum this month. hopefully by Dec 19th.
I still have to shoot a final piece of the promo video. My bird has issues so DBS sent me a loaner to get the shot.
Nice, have an approximate cost yet?
I have flown 16648 feet with this mod on a tripod while I was in a car and true to your statement, the limitation now is battery so the next thing is a battery mod.Just my two cents, you can have all the xmit power you want on your ground station, but the bird is limited to what it has - unless you put a new and more powerful wifi unit on it. Your ground station receiver sensitivity will need to be increased as well.
Now, if you were able to set up a directional antenna (rx & tx) at your ground station AND it could be kept aiming toward your drone you will see a nice range...but then you are up against the battery life...you can fly 5 miles away but not have enough juice to get home. The drone has omni-directional antennae (rx & tx), so their power is distributed 360 degrees (not equally either, because of dispersion issues) which further limits the range.
In a nutshell, the bottleneck on xmit power is in the drone, not the ground station.
I'm not even bringing up bandwidth...how much information can travel so far and reliably? telemetry data should be no problem, but FPV at a sufficient framerate and resolution will be a major sticking point.
thoughts?
I have flown 16648 feet with this mod on a tripod while I was in a car and true to your statement, the limitation now is battery so the next thing is a battery mod.
That was one way 16548 feet at around 400 feet altitude.Nice!
Was that one way? or 8000' (about 1-1/2 miles) out and then back? What altitude was your bird flying at the farthest distance?
Jeremiah, how did your air side video amp from Tony for the P3 work out? Everyone else I have heard from regretted doing the mod, for a variety of reasons. I was considering it as well, but Tony said it was incompatible with a battery mod, which defeated its purpose for me. Sounds like I may have dodged a bullet.ive been doing this all summer. I used 2 50' runs of lmr400 attached to 2 9dbi wifi antennas on my roof. Used 2 satellite mounts and about 10' of pvc pipe to get the antennas even higher. Ran the cable into the attic then down through the wall. The lmr is very thick so I have lmr240 from remote to 2 3watt suhans then from the suhans lmr240 again screw to the lmr400 in the wall. No attenuators. With this set up I have been out 15,000ft on a regular basis. Talked to tony with fpvlr and it just so happened as we were talking he was in the process of updating his site with a air side amp for the p3 for 99 bucks. He said in testing difference is night and day. I have one on the way. So paulgrenga, can you use 2 amps on the same line? One in the house close to the controller then another one on the roof just before the antenna?
It sucks!Jeremiah, how did your air side video amp from Tony for the P3 work out? Everyone else I have heard from regretted doing the mod, for a variety of reasons. I was considering it as well, but Tony said it was incompatible with a battery mod, which defeated its purpose for me. Sounds like I may have dodged a bullet.
Hey Chris. 100% correct on the cable. LMR is the way to go, especially at these frequencies. I use it for HF also, way less lossy than rg58 or rg8.New the to forum here... Got a P2v+ on Friday and love it!
To answer your question, I'm also a HAM... K3BMW for anyone else that is a HAM as well. I can tell you with very good certainty that your weak link will be the RG58. Quick lesson in cabling. Spend your money on a good cable and a good antenna. Signal loss is very really and I've spent countless hours and money trying to get around buying good cable and I can tell you from experience its not worth it.
So long story short.... As you go up in frequency, you have more DB loss in a cable. RG58 is really only used in mobile installs of a radio where you're operating under 900mhz and you're making a cable run of 15' or less in my opinion. If you're going to run 50', you will want a bare minimum of LMR400 cable or higher. The other option is shortening your cable run. At 2.4 ghz and 5.8 ghz, your DB loss over 50' of RG58 is will almost make it impossible to transmit and receive. You'll be better off just using the stock controller and range extender from inside the house (obviously that won't get you very far....)
I love the idea, but you'll definitely want some good cable or make your cable run less then 10'.
Just my 2 cents. You guys can teach me about my new Phantom and how to modify it and I'll teach you all you want to know about radios, cables and antennas
73's!
Chris - K3BMW
Sorry to hear that, but it removes all doubt in my mind that a birdside mod might be the solution to improving FPV stability at long range. Too many issues! It also reinforces how important the native power output from the birdside video antennas is, which is why I acquired 3 of the original motor .746 watt W323 P3P's over the last four months to back up my P4, as the W323A and W323B models with the new motors can't keep up at 18% and 30% less video power output, even though they deliver 10% more flight time. Thanks for the confirmation.It sucks!
The P4P requires no mods. In Auto 5.8Ghz, the control range exceeds 5 miles in hightly urban areas at 100 feet AGL with clear LOS! Only limiting factor is the battery, which at 30 mph using OA turned on, in P mode, will deliver 23 minutes, for over 10 miles under even mild winds. Get one!Interesting stuff!
I know this is an old thread but has anyone done any work with more modern units like the P4P?
It is dual band which I suppose would need 2 air side TX mods.
Can you also put external receive mods on the drone side of things?
Its digital, so amplification without noise is possible.
Have air side amplifiers reduced in size/weight recently?
Or is the whole point moot because battery technology limits range and all you need to do is mod the ground side with a bigger receive antenna and Tx booster?
The FCC hacks are not subject to forced updates. Updates can be disabled. However, the 2.4Ghz antenna mods also work much better in Europe under CE, where the P4P power limits are reversed: 2.4Ghz is stronger than 5.8Ghz.What if you are in Europe? The power limits are a joke. Power limits are attenuated in software, based on position. You can piss further.
It isn't 5 miles that is for sure. Try 500 yards
Software FCC hacks are Darwinian and hence subject to forced updates.
We need a reliable hardware solution where the signal strength can be modified at both ends and both frequency ranges to give a sensible usable range when given low power inputs.
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