FPV Questions

[acall]

Hi everyone, new here.

I've been flying for about a month now with the Phantom and Zenmuse gimbal and love it, but I definitely need to get an FPV setup. I've read a lot online already, and watched some videos, and thought I was convinced that a 5.8 ghz system was the right way to go, but then I went into a hobby shop today and the guy said 1.2 ghz was absolutely the best option. Any thoughts on this?

Also, is hobbyking.com a good website to order from? The same items that are expensive here at a store in LA are less then half the price on hobbyking.com. Is it worth it? I read somewhere they take weeks to ship items.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[martcerv]

You may want to look a but deeper, 1.2ghz can cause issues when used with 2.4ghz radio and the advantages of 1.2 are that you can get better penetration but the 2.4g radio will still be limited in much the same way as 5.8 video is. Thats why a pretty common setup is 5.8 video with 2.4 radio using 1.2g video youd also want some uhf or 433mhz radio to get the benefits of the stronger video link.

Using a futaba radio and dji 5.8 video link I get more then enough range for what I need easily getting 2km from both, my next setup may go the uhf and 1.2 video so I can do more forest penetration flying but for general phantom use I think my setup does well enough and the video signal is great even at 2km on the dji link.

Lower frequencies also need larger antennas so you need to take this into consideration on a phantom to see where you can fit a good antenna with the limited space the setup has. If your wanting to fly 5km or deep in forests the lower frequency setup is needed but a phantom battery wont really let you fly much beyond 2.5km anyway and leave much batterry for the return journey.

Hobby king is good for the cheap stuff but you need to stay away from the real crap as there is quite a bit of that there too. The cheapest and nastiest gear is rarely the best option but if you can get the same thing there as you would elsewhere for a better price then fine. I mostly just get batteries and small bits and pieces from them but only if at the local warehouse in Australia.

 

[acall]

Thanks a lot for all your tips. I really think 5.8 is more then adequate for what I'll be doing. I certainly don't have any plans to fly more then 2km away. I suppose I can always upgrade to 1.2 in the future if I decide it's worth it.

And yea, with 1.2 the guy at the hobby shop showed me the larger antenna that it requires and it certainly didn't look like it would fit very well on the phantom, despite him saying it would be fine.

Do you have any suggestions for a good place to buy FPV gear instead of hobby king? Thanks.