[mookie]

Just a quick flight report.

Made a small enclosure with an oplink and bluetooth module with an frsky faast to PPM RX

This allows me to control sparky 2 with its onboard UHF module from my Futaba 18sz with out having to make a cable up and sends telemetry back to my windows surface 3. haven't had any latency issues which i thought i might. Everything working perfectly.

malc

[Brian]

That's very good to know.

I tried a similar setup a couple of years ago with the original PipX boards and I did notice latency, but that was with a very old (72MHz analog) radio.  I think the latency across a modern 2.4GHz link is much much less.

[mookie]

The good news is the link was really good, i dipped the quad down over a little hill well a bump really so there was no line of sight at about 500m with no loss of control. The video went a bit crackly, but all in all a good test.

malc

[hwh]

Interesting, essentially it's a repeater or range extender.  You could mount it within it's Bluetooth range but high up and get better range.

I remember seeing a video someone posted on youtube a year or more back.  They mounted a repeater on one quadcopter and used it to extend the range of another one.

[mookie]

yes thats exactly the word i have been searching for a "repeater".
I flip the tailgate of my subaru up and it sits nice and high where the number plate is. The best bit about it is lack of wires
I also get RSSI reading on the OSD as well. Its all working really well.

I'm building a longer range quad at the moment to see how far i can get before RTH kicks in

[MultiBen]

Does the UHF antennae have to be attached, even if you are not going to use it at this time?

Ben

[Mateusz]

If you don't enable it, it's fine. But like with any transmiter if you enable it without antenna you may burn it. I always keep antenna attached.

[hwh]

I always keep one attached for the same reason, even on the bench.   If the rf power level is set to zero it disables the radio and the antenna isn't necessary but I'm always concerned that I'll accidentally set the rf power to a non zero value and damage the transmitter.

[Mateusz]

I always keep one attached for the same reason, even on the bench.   If the rf power level is set to zero it disables the radio and the antenna isn't necessary but I'm always concerned that I'll accidentally set the rf power to a non zero value and damage the transmitter.

Exactly, better safe than sorry !

[TheOtherCliff]

As a datapoint, I had the RF connector on a Revo pop off and flew it that way for several flights.  I had Revo set as coordinator, so it was transmitting.  I found it because I was getting strange flight behavior some times and looked for the cause.

With this and other times, I know I have run Revo without antenna at up to 50mw and it still works.  Of course, a different clone may use a different RF module and not survive this, but I've found that it's generally tolerant.  Of course I always intend to have an antenna on when the transmitter could be on.