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quadcopter with good range (help)

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what is the best possible range i can get from a quadcopter with live cam feed?
-can be with mod
-price has to be 200-400 max
-cam quality does not have to be the best, just okey(not to bad, want decent cam)
-Im from norway, so dont think about rules and laws when it comes to the quadcopter
-is it possible to get one that can go about 5km? or is that unrealistic?
 
I think that you might be able to pick up a quad made by Traxxas & then mod the signal antennas a bit by 1st finding good quality aftermarket antennas that provide high gains. For example when you look at the Typhoon H costing approx. $1,000 to $1,500 depending on the version. Even after spending that money the transmitter is only capable of maximum 0.056 watts on the 2.4Ghz band which is relatively nothing. The 2.4ghz band is used for controlling the Typhoon H as well as receiving telemetry from the drone. Then the 5.8Ghz band is merely capable of a max 0.5 watts or less according to FCC reports when tested by them before Yuneec was able to sell the Typhoon H. Now after reviewing the above information, the Typhoon H using its stock antenna setup is claimed only to be capable of reaching 1km. Of course with various aftermarket antenna modifications I've seen many YouTube videos where other Typhoon owners fly their drones out to 2.6km only after replacing the transmitter antennas & nothing else. Personally, I'm planning on not only upgrading my antennas with a high gain antenna setup that is manufactured by a well known long range boosting antenna company. Also plan on first taking the transmitter apart & replacing the internal antenna wires with much higher quality shielded ones, then a few boosters for both the 2.4Ghz band & the 5.8ghz band which will also include a rechargeable battery to be able to power the booster while out in the field, of course I'll also be including antenna noise filters so I'll be able to benefit fully from the boosters. Then to get the strongest signal strength between my TX & my UAV I'll be opening the body of my Typhoon to replace the internal antenna wires with upgraded shielded ones then instead of terminating the antennas inside of the UAV I'll mount two antennas on the outside of the body to get better signal & installing 7dBi antennas too. Then, for now, the last signal improving modification I'll be doing is because the 5.8ghz band is solely used to send the video downlink from the camera to my transmitter integrated 7" tablet screen I'll be adding a larger 4 or 5 leaf clover antenna but I have to be careful on this one so that the camera will still stay balanced.

Whenever you are looking to upgrade your antennas on either your TX or the drone, you'll want to make sure to stick with omnidirectional antennas that way you won't have to worry about exactly where you're pointing the antenna at all times. You must remember that the total gain from any antenna setup depends on really how serious you are about getting max signal gain. I've seen some 16dBi gain antennas called 5 or 6 turn helical antennas for approx. $15 or less. Again depending on how serious you want to improve signal gain you can find much higher gain omnidirectional antennas or if you think you can handle aiming the antenna almost perfectly at the UAV then directional antennas do come in higher dBi then their omnidirectional counterpart, but larger antennas & some directional ones most likely will require mounting on some support like a tripod or just something to keep it standing straight up plus either if your really close to your house you can get the power needed for those antennas & their boosters from an extension cord or else you'll need a relatively large battery with or without solar panels.
Other than the above you're able to install better antennas in the drone itself, then if you still want an additional boost in signal a micro booster along with a micro filter. But even after all of that nothing is ever guaranteed one way or another. Two people could buy two drones from the same place, then immediately take them out flying together, they could, by all means, get drastically different results as far as range in signals, that is because there are so many different variables to account for it is crazy.

On your Price of 200-400 are you asking that to be the price for everything including any & all mods etc.? & is that number is USD or what? because you can find a new Traxxas drone for around $260 that flies at about 50+Mph that has a decent camera comparable to a security camera resolution.

So you are in Norway, that is awesome. My entire mother's side of my family migrated from there not too long ago.My Great-Great Grandparents migrated over here to participate in the Homesteading Act Of 1862, which provided any adult citizen (or person intending to become a citizen) who headed a family was able to qualify for a grant of 160 acres by paying a small registration fee & living on the land continuously for five years. I do not see it as too long ago because I'm only 27 & in 2014 it was the 100 year anniversary since first homesteading the land. Still to this day the land is in my families name & only have to pay yearly taxes. Unfortunately, that land they settled on remains undeveloped other than dirt roads & a barbed wire fence surrounding the area. Every year over the first weekend of September the U.S.A. celebrate a holiday called Labor Day, we all now as multiple families try to coordinate to go out there for about 4-5 days, out in very rural Nevada & while there each year we always try to plan some project to improve the land in some way. **** apparently the final claim, for 80 acres in southeastern Alaska, was approved in 1988. By any chance do you recognize the last name or sir name of ENGH??


Sorry now back on topic. Are you saying that currently in Norway you do not have ANY laws & regulations for drones/uavs? That nice, while here in the US we have really lenient rules & regulations more because our government waited till the last moment to implement any so therefore they are still quite behind & even though our are quite low the ownership of UAV's is going up drastically which also adds to the amount of people that do not bother to abide by any of the current rules nor even so much as look them up to attempt to familiarize themselves with them. So for example, we have stories in our news all the time about people piloting their UAV's in the wrong way or in the wrong place like for instance this past summer we were experiencing many wild fires around the country & during one of them as our firefighters were attempting to put the fires out by ways of helicopter & plane, they were forced to stop fighting the fires so they could land all their aircraft's because it became to dangerous for the pilots to fly only because owners of some UAV's with cameras decided to not only fly to capture good pictures of the fires but then they began to fly them way too close which made it deadly for pilots to keep flying as UAV's can take a full sized plane out of the sky just as easily as if it were to suck in a large bird into one of its turbines. So the more & more UAV owners keep pushing the limits & taking advantage of our lenient laws the sooner you can bet that our government will begin to implement much more severe rules etc. for instance just only 1-2 weeks ago in Sweden their high court system ruled that all UAV's with a camera were banned from ever flying & if anyone wanted to fly a UAV it must not be with any camera whatsoever which I find to be extremely dumb because why do most people buy UAV's? My thought is because of the ability to use the camera to capture amazing photos or record awesome video

Finally onto your last question. 5km distance from you to your UAV? Yes that is in the realm of unrealistic even if you were to pay extreme high dollar you wouldn't be able to get that kind of distance. I have personally seen a YouTube video of a guy in Australia that owns a Typhoon H & the only modification he had done was upgraded to high gain antennas & he was showing in the video that he could now achieve about 2.6km of signal distance, but at the same time just as I said above there are so many variables to consider it crazy. For instance the guy that did that video out to 2.6km was in Australia which may or may not have much less signal interference than here in the USA or in Norway (which I'm not familiar with the saturation level of Norway as far as how many people, places & companies are using wireless signal of both the 2.4ghz band and the 5.8ghz band & you also must consider many wireless home telephones work on & around the 2.4ghz band & many other wireless devices produce what is called NOISE ie signal interference. Plus the same guy when he flew, he did so over a path that was really wide open with the tallest tree around must of only been about 5 feet tall & the clear path that seemingly went the entire 2.6km path was also about 50-75 yards wide until there are any trees or object were much taller then 5-10 feet.

Another issue with providing long range is the particular battery that you use how long it will last & even if its possible to use bigger batteries you must account for power to weight ratio were after recieving so much extra flight time by using higher mAh batteries your also adding additional weight so you come to a point were you'll start to loose flight time and/or start to really heat up you motors and/or th ESC's (electronic speed controllers, which are in between each motor & the battery.

One last thing, even though these ranges are really unrealistic for a quadcopter, you may be able to achieve the range your wanting with a decent camera & at a relatively low price by purchasing a fixed wing uav because I've seen r/c gliders (ie with no populsion systems at all) only having a battery to be able to control the steering, & they often times can fly for an hour or possibly upto 2 hours depending on the weather & skill of the pilot.

I truly apologize for such an extremely long post (I think that this may be my longest to date) but I hope that you find at least some of the info helpful.
Thank You, Tom C.
 
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Go to the sister site PhantomPilots and search long flights. People go 7-8 miles out with some battery and antenna mods. I have a Phantom 3 Advanced and took it out over 3 miles stock. With a $145 antenna, I've gone 3.8 miles. Have to return bc of battery since I don't have a battery mod.
Good luck
 
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Wow that has to be the longest reply i have ever seen! haha. it is really helpdul to read all the information you have provided. are you going to post a video when you are done upgrading? i was not aware of many things you have said which is nice to know. how hard is it to upgrade the antenna/signal to get better range? was thinking 2-4 houndred dollars in total but as i've reserched more i now know its gonna be really hard. I am actually considering buying a used one from ebay just to save money on the drone. the phantom 3 advanced looks great when it comes to distance and signal, so does the new mavic, but the price is very different on those 2. i think mabye the phantom 3 advance would be the better choice for me and mabye upgrading the signal/antenna later. do you know if it is expensive or even possible to do that? and do you have any idea if its safe to buy it from ebay? i know its a risk, but i can find amazing deals if careful enough i would imagine.

your story about your mother side of the family migrated from here was interesting, and yes i have actually heard the name before a couple of times! do you ever travel to norway? i have never been in america, but i guess its just a dream for now to travel there since it is extremly expensive to travel there from here..

I did not think it was rules and regulations for it in norway but apperently it was some rules and regulations from 1 jan this year.. but i would not really think about the rules that much as long as im careful and fly where there is no people around. Or i would just get a licence so i can fly high and far away legaly. the rule in sweden is really dumb yeah! i kind of undertand the rules when it comes to stupid people who does stupid things with the drones as you said.

I don't think its so unrealistic to get the distance if i mod the signal and antenna plus mabye the battery if needed. the phantom 3 advanced can reach a good distance with just the stock antenna.

sorry for the short reply, but im in school and really have to get back to what we are doing hahah.
thanks for the reply anyways, it was helpful!
 
Go to the sister site PhantomPilots and search long flights. People go 7-8 miles out with some battery and antenna mods. I have a Phantom 3 Advanced and took it out over 3 miles stock. With a $145 antenna, I've gone 3.8 miles. Have to return bc of battery since I don't have a battery mod.
Good luck

Have much did you pay for the drone? in norway the price is above 1000dollars, so the price is much better in the US
 
Yes I don't dispute your claim at all, but no matter what drone/uav you have & no matter if it is stock or modified everyone will always get different results depending on so so many factors. One of the main reasons that DJI uav's are able to reach such distances is because of the way that their video is sent back to them ie the signal type rather than 5.8ghz they have what is called light bridge which is a mix of a few different technologies but the fact is, is that most all UAVs including DJI communicate their controls back & forth from TX to RX using the 2.4ghz band along with the telemetry information. For example if you were to take a Yuneec Typhoon H out into a mostly clear area that had relatively few things that could interrupt wifi there are many people if you look on youtube that frequently prove they've all been able to fly them out to insane distances without losing control or FPV with & without mods. I for one do not have the B***S to take my $1.5k UAV that i just purchased out to anywhere even if it were perfectly flat wide open spaces for as far as the eye could possibly see & attempt to test its distance limits because I do not want to be the guy that knows that it is capable of 4.25 miles but that it is not capable of going 4.30 miles because the only way to know that is if you loose control and/or sight via the FPV of it. Also even if I were to take my UAV out to a wide open area that so many others with the same exact UAV as I have flown to far out distances of say 4 miles or whatever & then attempt to fly mine out to 3.5 miles because like I said everyone's results will be different each & every time they fly.

One last example & caution to whomever does this habit, first before you ever fly your UAV you always want to be positive that your propeller's are as close as possible to being perfectly balanced because not only will it make your fpv video stream jelloy but it can ruin your motors possibly but it will definitely limit the life of the motors; the procedure on how to balance them is what I'm cautioning because for such a long time people have been using the exact same method to balance their UAV props as what any r/c helicopter pilot uses but while it is perfectly fine to balance rc heli props by sanding/shaving a tiny bit from the heavy side of each prop if you use that same method on your UAV props then what you are in fact doing to them is changing the pitch & even worse than that is you'll most likely change the pitch of each one differently. R/C Heli props if you look at them from one end you'll find that they have one single pitch angle that travels from the very outside to the inside of each prop, whereas if you do the same with any UAV prop you'll see that the pitch is different depending on exactly where on the blade you look kind of like in a corkscrew design & this is because when any of the props for UAVS are designed they are done so on a computer & the designer is able to control exactly where he is wanting to focus the most lifting power whether it be directly in the middle of each one or more towards each motor as to provide some heat control & then they bring their pitch out to the end in a way as to minimize noise which also is linked to instability. So basically in a nut shell if you ever are balancing your props use a proper low to no friction balancing stand & then instead of taking material from the heavy end buy some thin 15 second CA Glue & on the lighter side just barely drop a few drops then wait for it to dry (i like to move the prop around so the glue kind doesn't ball up in any way & instead distributes But only along near the end) then put it back on the balancer to see how close you've come & it is really easy to balance them perfectly plus this won't change any flight characteristics which no matter how long you've been doing any of this for or how much experience whenever you remove material from those blades you're always making at least one or more of the flight characteristics worse & never ever better
 
Here's about as far as I can go due to battery. Had 3-4mph tail wind coming home and got back with 22% batteryIMG_0122.PNG
 

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