Improving the range on WalkSnail - replacing the VTX antenna with a RushFPV Cherry

[@Michelsen3K]

Thanks for the video. Very useful. My new 15cm foxeeer ufl antennas are on their way. Did some range test with the walksnail v2 antennas. It's a hugh improvement to the v1 stock antennas. I was suprised how good v2 antennas work at long range. I run the avatar goggles with three truerc x-air single patches and one stubby. I'll be back when i got decent results with the long foxeer antennas.

[@MCsCreations]

Awesome flying and testing, Wayne! 😃 Those are definitely great antennas!!! Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@CurryKitten]

Cheers MC :)

[@DigitalCruzer]

I replaced the original antenna i smashed with a flyfishrc osprey, i just use a direct ufl one, there is alway loss in the cable and connectors so i get the shortest that will fit properly but still has the element up above my battery a little and it definitely seemed to be alot more stable then the original! So now i just toss the original that comes in the vtx kits! I will say Walksnails newest antenna is improved, but i trust the flyfish more... I have tried the rush since too cuz they was on sale on AliExpress, i really can't tell the difference between the cherry and osprey, the osprey just has better selection and availability. But newbeedrone has a cloverleaf ufl i put on my 85mm ws and it is way better yet! It's just not as durable but on a super light weight build its fine also the length of cable needs more selections

[@InfluxFPV]

i built an AOS UL7 Recently with walksnail avatar pro and used ufl to sma and 2 cherry rush extended, and my god the range difference at lower altitudes is crazy for me

[@CurryKitten]

Nice - that's what I was hoping. I'll test this config out as soon as the UFL to SMA adapters arrive

[@ReggieRailSystems]

Certainly no doubt that the taller Rush antenna is the answer over the original walksnail. I do want to see if the sma connector adapter bit causes any loss since there will be another connector junction being put between the VTX and the Antenna?

[@CurryKitten]

Yes - looking forward to seeing what happens with the SMA antenna as well

[@williamlosch]

Came to say this! I hear from fpv pilots all the time that adapter causes signal loss. (I think Bardwell tested it way back)

[@CurryKitten]

Yep there's always some loss introduced with adapters, the question is though will the fact it allows a longer antenna outweigh the loss. Don't know, but I want to find out as well

[@williamlosch]

Thanks for the content as always. Do you like MMCX connectors? I do! (Someone recently told me though, if it snaps off inside the vtx it may be impossible to get it back out. I’ve avoided that situation so far, thankfully)

[@SbangFPV]

8:40 you should get Iflight Albatross V2. It has a 150mm stem. It’s amazing.

[@CurryKitten]

I hadn't heard of the Albatross before now - if I get the oppertunity to test it out, I will do so

[@cyclops-fpv]

What does focus mode actually do? I noticed the grass in the fields were noticeable different colour wise on way back between Antennas.(walksnail was worse)

[@CurryKitten]

Focus mode kicks in when the signal is bad to try and give you the main bulk of the image without spiking the latency. Yu'll see these as being clear in the middle of the picture but very pixelated in the sides. I prefer to fly with it (on auto) as before when the signal got bad the latency coudl spike to over 120ms which was very jaring

[@Michelsen3K]

Focus mode might be useful as sign to keep an eye on your bitrate. To be honest i turned focus mode off. You can fly easily when frame is blinking red with a bitrate below 10mbit and signal 1. Just stay calm turn your head a little to get line of sight. One importatent note to get some confidence...get gps rescue in betaflight correctly. There's no need reason to panic. Just hit the gps rescue button and few seconds later your quad is back on screen.

[@cyclops-fpv]

@@CurryKitten ok cheers I'll try that,flown mine out to 800 meters(1.5km round trip)on stock Antennas @200mw without any smearing I was on 720p on low resolution though std biterate.

[@wtfmimshag]

ufl to SMA definitely not easy to find! Tend to be a bit long for easy mounting on a quad as well. The ufl interface is probably my least liked thing about walksnail. Have a pair of albatross 100mm LHCPs on a Moz7 with Avatar twin antenna VTX, performance is fantastic.

[@CurryKitten]

Yes - I've either managed to find too long or too short, I've got a 5cm and 10cm adapter comin gin the post (soon hopefully)

[@HrDux]

Huge improvement with the taller/better antennas! Regarding the vibration, did you restore the iFlight filters after upgrading to Betaflight 4.4/4.5 and the new motors? The C7 will do that with the default filters. I think it has to do with the ESC (Succex/Blitz) causing gyro noise at 24khz PWM. I changed the PWM frequency from 24khz to 48khz and it cleared up the gyro noise enough that I was able to remove the aggressive iFlight filters. Anyway, just a suggestion.

[@CurryKitten]

As iFlight is still saying (at least when I last checked) don't use 4.4 and is saying they will release their suggested tune for 4.5 at some point, this is still on their recommended 4.3 settings (which is annoying from the lack of HD OSD support) Pretty sure it was initially flying without any oscillation which makes me think I've just got a dodgy prop somewhere

[@HrDux]

@@CurryKitten If the vibration happens at wide range of throttle, then it's probably something mechanical like a propeller. But if it's at a specific throttle level, then the ESC is might be causing gyro noise. I would give 48khz PWM a try; it's a simple change that you can easily revert if it doesn't work for you. I was able to fix mid-throttle oscillations on two of my quads (Chimera 7 and AOS 4) by switching to 48khz PWM on my ESCs. Shielding the ESC can also help.

[@chrisdomeier4985]

Hi sorry for the question, but have you activated the high Frame rate on left video? The latency difference is typical for that

[@CurryKitten]

The settings are the same on the left/right videos in this - onyl the antenna changed. I did make some changes in the previous video where I was looking at the improvements I could do on the goggles. This involved moving from high to low bit rate, but i can't recall if i changed the frame rate

[@ezalku]

that's also improve gps signals b yX2 ✌

[@CurryKitten]

Interesting - it looked like that when you compared the DVR footage doesn't it. It would certainly move the original Walksnail antenna (which would have been directly over the GPS) out of the way. I'll have to examine some more footage to see if this is actually the case though