Taranis Antenna Mod + RSSI

[keukpa]

Responding to the first post.
I've got my RSSI alarm set to 40
Below is from the openTX wiki.

'Probably the most important telemetry value is RSSI, which is an indication of how much signal the receiver in the model is seeing from the radio, and will warn you in advance if you are at risk of losing control be it due to external interference, excessive distance, badly oriented or damaged antennas etc. The telemetry settings page gives you 2 alarm levels you can set that will be announced in clear voice ("RF signal low" and "RF signal critical"). They are set by default to levels that have been considered suitable and safe for normal line of sight flight (45 and 42), but if you want to adjust them yourself the following explanations will be useful:

RSSI on FrSky equipment is represented using a logarithmic scale (dB), not in %. This means that when RSSI is high, a small difference in distance between the transmitter and receiver will lead to a big change of the RSSI value. It is perfectly normal to see a value of about 100 when next to the model, and already down in the 70's by the time you've walked to the other end of the field. When you have a reading of 50, it will however take a lot of extra distance to reach the alarm level of 45. The basic approximation rule is that a doubling of distance between pilot and model will result in a drop of 6dB of the RSSI value, which should make the previous explanation clear: If you are 5m away from the model it only takes another 5m to reduce RSSI by 6dB, but if you are 600m away from the model it will then take another 600m to reduce the value by the "same" 6dB.

Loss of control will happen when RSSI reaches a value of about 38, so setting an alarm at 10 is useless. From the above explanation you can see that between the default critical alarm (42) and usual practical loss of control we have a margin of about 4dB, or range factor of around 1.5. The alarms are thus rather conservative, and in normal conditions even if you heard the critical alarm you would still be far from losing control (you should be at around >1000m distance, with another 500m to spare). Intermittent loss due to local fades and antenna orientation mismatches could however get more and more frequent.

As mentioned the default alarms are deemed safe for usual line of sight flight, but for example with FPV setups especially when coupled with automatic return to home systems and properly configured failsafes the safety margin can be reduced and you should be able to extract more or less double of the standard range out of the system. It is up to you to (safely!) experiment as once the margin gets reduced influence of external interference sources will start to become more noticeable, such as it is impossible to predict the behavior of a given installation in a particular model.'

Fantastic info, just what I needed :)

Karma given :)

Keukpa

[rob.thomson]

Just done the same mod on mine :)




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[keukpa]

AWESOME DUDE!

[rob.thomson]

Now...

Today, before the mod...

I did 1824m on the stock antenna!!

So maybe I will get a bit more :)


A small thing to note.  The current release of opentx has a timing bug, that results in false alerts on the rssi being generated.   A fix is in the source tree - just not our yet.

So....  Don't fret at the occasional 'blip'.  Worry when it is really moaning at you!


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[Flyn]

X2 kits left.

[Flyn]

All kits sold

[rob.thomson]

Did a little bit of bling on my mod :)



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[Flyn]

Cool, does the bling do anything? Just a better mount for the SMA?

[rob.thomson]

I installed mine by embedding a washer into the plastic on the case.

What I did way to find a washer of the right size, then heated it with an iron while pushing it into the hole.

Made it nice and secure.

I then capped that washer with another to make it all neat :)

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[rob.thomson]

Changed my my mind.  I did not like the red.

So made a black cap :)



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[Coyote]

Mine has just been fitted, thanks Rory and John for the idea. Slight cockup, I only have SMA connectors on my 2.4ghz antennas no RP-SMA ...............Doh !!!

New antennas ordered express delivery :) 

[pk-surfing]

Mine would have been fitted but.....

Went out shopping this morning (town was gridlocked !) and when we gotback home there was a card through the letter box saying go to the sorting office on Monday to get the envelope  :(

PK

[Flyn]

Mine has just been fitted, thanks Rory and John for the idea. Slight cockup, I only have SMA connectors on my 2.4ghz antennas no RP-SMA ...............Doh !!!

New antennas ordered express delivery :)

No worries mate, glad I could sort you guys some parts

[Coyote]

Antennas came today, mod complete. Quite surprised at the higher db one, its frekkin huge ! lol Only just fits in the Taranis case diagonally :)

[Coyote]

This should give you a giggle :)

This is bs85`s antenna, this is what I was expecting turning up .............







This is what actually turned up :)



Wonder if it got ran over on the way to me ?