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wlfk
Veteran
Location: uk
| I put a 2.4ghz 10mW video TX on my helicopter, and turned the TX power down to 10mW. Eventually I got a lockout at 30-40 yards when the horizontal antenna was side-on to me, and the vertical was shielded by the C/F frames. My TX antenna was vertical. If you turned the helicopter round 180 so the closest antenna was vertical, like the TX antenna, then the lockout condition ended, and the range increased dramatically.
The first moral of the story is that the FAAST connection is remarkably robust. I was sceptical that it would work at all with the video transmitter in situ, let alone work even when I reduced the TX power by a factor of 10.
The second moral of the story is that orientation can make a difference. As can shielding.
If people are getting away with poor setups, this is a testament to the basic reliability of the system - but it shouldn't be an encouragement to copy them.
Another two thoughts - digital systems can lockout, but even if they don't seem to glitch they are still subject to intererence. In the FAAST system, the latency increases as the transmission quality decreases. Secondly, I imagine (though I don't have this information to hand) that it might take an appreciable amount of time between loosing a signal and the failsafe kicking in. If you are doing a maneuver that involves motion - e.g. flying a figure of 8, then you might actually not notice if transmission was lost for a fraction of a second before being re-acquired. I don't think it's a coincidence that when I had my lockout I was hovering some distance away.
I had done fairly extensive range-checks before ever daring to fly with such a system. And I had checked the heli in different orientations. Seems I wasn't quite careful enough.
K
A bit like a kite, but 500 times more expensive |
| 04-06-2008 02:03 AM | | | |
with the heli in the worst possible position (i.e. tail in 10 degrees nose to the left). I would have gotten more in other orientations. Instructions require 30 paces if I'm not mistaken,
