Micro Combo Performance

[Bad Raven]

Micro Combo Performance, or in this case lack of performance!

A while back I bought one of these:-



https://www.banggood.com/Eachine-DVR03-DVR-AIO-5_8G-72CH-025mW50mW200mW-Switchable-VTX-520TVL-14-Cmos-FPV-Camera-p-1117419.html

Now pretty obviously this was not going to be great on a true micro quad, due both to greater weight and to added current drain from the DVR cct (and additional power output if used).

So I fitted it to a Diatone ET150 with 1104 motors used for garden/small field use.  This worked OK, but I wasn't THAT pleased with it. Then yesterday I decided to take it to our field to fly inside the small landing mown area just before our planning permission start time as its very quiet and would have zero impact. Now, OK, it was damp and still a little misty, but the reception was worse than usual, with flickers and intermittent glitches to Venetian blind banding.

I swapped to another quad and carried on OK.

Today I have investigated and found that the lower part of the RHCP antenna stamping was not soldered to the aerial shielding, it was relying on friction, and with time a pretty poor contact.

SO, I dismantled the aerial off the PCB, removed the old cable (it was far too short anyway to get it up as far in the clear as I preferred), replaced with new low loss mini co-ax, and ensured decent soldered joints at both ends, checking then sealing in with hot glue.

And its another world in performance now!  Clearly the acceptable but hardly startling performance when first purchased was capable of being improved even before it deteriorated.

I have now carefully checked some of my other main SMA/RP-SMA antennas and found two where the inner was not soldered, only relying on induced/light contact for signal transfer. I have "corrected " them, and they now show a distinct improvement.

Worth checking I think?

[shawdreamer]

Ive had similar experience with the Eachine TX03 (pretty much the same unit WO DVR), at first it was pretty good signal wise but started getting patchy and weak really quick, checked clover to find the top solder point to the actual clover arms had come away so basically the only antenna I was getting was the short little crappy coax between board and clover, I was swapping the clover for a whip anyway (for the spark clone build) and Ive got pretty much as good a signal as I got with the clover when it was in pristine condition, Ive had about 200m out of it so far with clear LOS with only slight break-up.

TBF the cam and boards are quite a decent set of in terms of performance, just seems like they had some half-arsed toolbag doing the antenna final assembly on all their AIO's

[hoverfly]

Good heads up B.R.  just checked  and one of mine had crappy joint.

[Bad Raven]

I had a while back bought some low loss small diameter co-ax from a Radio Ham (He's expecting to talk to me on air soon!!!   ). Could be a while................. 

With the RHCP head not only now well attached but also lifted up clearer from the frame than before I had high hopes there would be an improvement, and so this proved.

Stability and freedom from glitches has improved markedly, with 100% quality out to beyond the length of a rugby pitch and a half,  so I am now going to do similar to a unit which has not noticeably exhibited poor performance - is it possible to improve its performance further anyway?

We'll see..........................