I am consistently seeing my downlink range limit to about 400-425 meters. It's pretty solid up this point but it will start to black out at the 400-425 mark. It will come back on but goes in and out to the point where I can't rely on it or feel comfortable with it. I'm using the 500mw Mondo stinger and the yellow jacket receiver. I use a 3 lobe blue beam antenna on the transmitter and I have tried 2 hockey puck Vitenna antennas as well as 2 4 lobe blue beam receiver antennas. They both give me about the same results. I mount my transmitter half way out on boom 5 and angle the antenna straight down. I really need another 100-125 meters so my range is about 500-550 as I will be filming fly overs for a golf course. I have a spotter toward the end of the holes but I was hoping to get just a little better out of the 5.8 system. Does anyone have any suggestions? I didn't want to switch the pilot camera to the 1.3 and put the 5.8 system on the camera op because he would just in the same situation.
Antenna tracker plus better( higher) placement of your diversity is the way to go. Shooting these kinds of shots where you are flying past your sight line is a recipe for disaster. I smell a " I crashed, here is my GPX " post soon. Your better off getting in a middle position and flying 250 m each way.
That's not a bad idea Brad. I will use a spotter also as well. I'm going to give it a try and see if I can be out of the picture behind a tree so it doesn't get me in the shot.
Gary the guy at Iftron agrees with you about the 1.5 watt transmitter so I just purchased it. He said that tripling the power will get about twice the distance which will be more than enough distance than I will ever need. Although I like Brad's idea especially for those dog leg holes.
I can't justify spending an additional $430 on the 1.5 TX when I am having awesome results with a 1.2Ghz system that was $200 total. I get better reception and distance with the stock whip antennas then I do with my 5.8 w/cloverleafs. Very shortly I am switching it all over to 1.2 on my large copter. Josh
So I upgraded my TX to the 1.5 Extreme mondo, didn't improve one bit. My picture was cutting out anywhere from 150-300 meters. I tried different combinations of antennas from the blue beam, to ventinnas, to the stock ones, no difference. I tried different cameras from a Go Pro to the security mini cam, no difference. I tried using the mikrocopter monitor that Quadrocopter sells versus a 9" Marshall LCD monitor no difference. So I talked to Jim at Iftron and he asked me to send him everything back. So after testing they found my yellow jacket receiver bad as it had a capacitor with one leg completely off the board and not allowing the one channel to pass any signal. I should have it back today, I'm eager to test it. Iftron's customer service is outstanding, they even overnighted my stuff back to me for no charge. I am extremely impressed with their customer service as they really care about their customers. Man I have had to have the worst luck with electronics over the past 6 months. 2 Bad MX20's, one had a bad RF board, and the replacement had a broken off switch when I opened up the box. 1 bad MK FCB, just started burning up as I was about to fly for my 4th flight of the day, even Riley at QC has no explaination for it. 1 bad Sony Lanc cable board and now a bad 5.8 yellow jacket. I"m starting to get a complex here.
Wow, Dave. You certainly seem to be a magnet for Bad Things Happening. If it really is true, I'd like to thank you for taking the hit for the rest of us -- otherwise we'd be experiencing all of the failures you have had! But good to hear that Iftron's customer service is so good! Andy.
I got my entire system back up and tested it. It is definitely a little better but not by much and my screen doesn't necessarily black out as quickly as it will go to a scrambled snowy picture before it looses it completely. I have a few questions for anyone running the Iftron products on 3 axis gimbal setups. 1. How many of you are using the 5.8 system for the camera FPV? For those of you that are running them do you have them on boom 5? I was thinking about trying to put it on booms 3,4, 6, or 7 to see if I get better signal and less interference from the gimbal. The mondo TX might be hard to balance the CG if I move it off of boom 5. 2. Is there anyone having good success using the 1.3 lawmate system for the pilot and the 5.8 system on the gimbal?
Hi Dave: I'm still using Lawmate 1.3 Mhz for FPV mounted on the hub near boom 5 with a 10" semi-rigid extender cable and Bluebeam antenna on top. I'm was using the Mondo Stinger with 5.8 Bluebeams, but I switched to the Mondo Extreme (with three times the radiated RF power) to reduce the dropouts. I did confirm with Iftron that you can use two Mondo's on 5.8Ghz if you use them on channels that are two apart. For examples channels 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. I've not tried it yet. Andy.
Interesting. I wonder if a long extended cable would help the 5.8 system on boom 5 where I have it mounted now. So where do you have your mondo stinger on one of the landing gear?
The Mondo Stinger (and now the Extreme) are mounted on a small acrylic plate that is held on by the bolts holding the boom clamps that attach the landing gear to the gimbal boom. I made the plate up myself. I also needed to use slightly longer 3mm bolts so I could mount the plate and use 3mm Nylock nuts. Andy.
I think I might have found my problem potentially. After I was working on my copter this morning I look up boom 5, where I have my mondo stinger mounted and notice that its right under my lipo cables. It sits under where my Lipo Y cable is and my 2 lipo battery wires stick out. The only thing i can think of doing is relocating the TX to another boom but since the Mondo Extreme is so heavy its going to take a lot to rebalance it (UGH). Right now its easy to offset the weight as I just have to move the batteries slightly toward boom 1. I think I'm going to do a test where I'll move it temporarily to another boom and see if it really helps. Then worry about rebalancing.