Since purchasing my P2V last month, I have been on a quest to reach out for max flight distance w/ fpv without going crazy and tripling the price of the drone. Stock out of the box performance was 1200ft @ 300 ft Alt. It just wasn't cutting it for me.
I purchased the P2V app on iTunes and it brought me out to around 2000 ft. Better but still not enough!
So it was on to antennas.
I have tested nearly every antenna combination and I found that 2 x left hand polarized 2.4 & 5.8 cloverleafs attached to the aircraft (One horizontal and one vertical) along with using a 2.4 & 5.8 BiQuad antenna's on the signal booster & flight controller seem to work exceptionally well! After installing all of this upgraded goodness my test flight tonight took me out to 5,692ft @ 360 ft altitude... w/ 12 satellites locked at peak!! (Only sat mod was to tuck the GPS cable into the stock shielding). Could have gone further but I chickened out considering remaining battery for trip home.
I'm using LEFT hand polarized antennas on the aircraft for "DJI stuff" so that I can use a RIGHT hand polarized antenna for my Boscam FPV goggles.
It was decided that it would be much easier to install a separate micro Sony 800TVL, CAN-Bus, IOSD mini & 2.4 ghz transmitter w/ a RHCP antenna than it was to attempt to jack into the the stock camera. Using the different polarized antennas negates nearly all interference from the DJI frequencies and the results are very good. One benefit of having a stand-alone FPV is that I can concentrate on the driving while I have an assistant on the DJI App running the camera stills & video. Another benefit is that I can demount the Phantom camera and shave a TON of weight when I just want to fly solo FPV. Instead of additional batteries, I have the transmitter & camera wired directly into the battery input leads on the main controller board.
Considering the stock battery 5200Mah capacity, 1 mile range is comfortable. If I have to fight a return trip head-wind, I would rather have the capacity to get it back home with a little play time around the house vs romping a 1/2 mile through a cut down wheat field in the middle of winter to retrieve the drone (ask me how I know).
For extra range, I am currently looking into modifying a smart battery circuit board with "off the shelf" LiPo's. Once I am able to accomplish a solid 30-35 minutes of flight time, I will look into adding amplifiers to the control & FPV to reach out to 2-3 miles. I really would prefer not to bother with crazy ground rig setups and antenna trackers. There comes a point when you are saddled with so much equipment that has to be working together perfectly (at all times) that it takes away from the fun-factor of flying.
Overall, I am a very happy pilot and have been really impressed with the Phantom drone!
I purchased the P2V app on iTunes and it brought me out to around 2000 ft. Better but still not enough!
So it was on to antennas.
I have tested nearly every antenna combination and I found that 2 x left hand polarized 2.4 & 5.8 cloverleafs attached to the aircraft (One horizontal and one vertical) along with using a 2.4 & 5.8 BiQuad antenna's on the signal booster & flight controller seem to work exceptionally well! After installing all of this upgraded goodness my test flight tonight took me out to 5,692ft @ 360 ft altitude... w/ 12 satellites locked at peak!! (Only sat mod was to tuck the GPS cable into the stock shielding). Could have gone further but I chickened out considering remaining battery for trip home.
I'm using LEFT hand polarized antennas on the aircraft for "DJI stuff" so that I can use a RIGHT hand polarized antenna for my Boscam FPV goggles.
It was decided that it would be much easier to install a separate micro Sony 800TVL, CAN-Bus, IOSD mini & 2.4 ghz transmitter w/ a RHCP antenna than it was to attempt to jack into the the stock camera. Using the different polarized antennas negates nearly all interference from the DJI frequencies and the results are very good. One benefit of having a stand-alone FPV is that I can concentrate on the driving while I have an assistant on the DJI App running the camera stills & video. Another benefit is that I can demount the Phantom camera and shave a TON of weight when I just want to fly solo FPV. Instead of additional batteries, I have the transmitter & camera wired directly into the battery input leads on the main controller board.
Considering the stock battery 5200Mah capacity, 1 mile range is comfortable. If I have to fight a return trip head-wind, I would rather have the capacity to get it back home with a little play time around the house vs romping a 1/2 mile through a cut down wheat field in the middle of winter to retrieve the drone (ask me how I know).
For extra range, I am currently looking into modifying a smart battery circuit board with "off the shelf" LiPo's. Once I am able to accomplish a solid 30-35 minutes of flight time, I will look into adding amplifiers to the control & FPV to reach out to 2-3 miles. I really would prefer not to bother with crazy ground rig setups and antenna trackers. There comes a point when you are saddled with so much equipment that has to be working together perfectly (at all times) that it takes away from the fun-factor of flying.
Overall, I am a very happy pilot and have been really impressed with the Phantom drone!
