Obstacle Blocking Drone Signal

T

TopMove

New Member
After conducting research and reading through forum posts, I have come to realize that obstacles, especially trees, pose a significant problem if the drone moves out of sight, such as between or under trees. What could be the solution here? Could I possibly place some kind of signal booster or intermediate antenna on top of a tall tree or building between me and the drone, which would receive the RC signal and relay it back to the drone, thus creating a solid connection?

Alternatively, if I am situated on one side of a hill, could I place a signal booster on top of the hill and fly the drone on the other side without experiencing any signal loss?
 
Hi Bruce at rcmodlereview on you tube has done videos on boosters etc so take a look he even shows how to build them
 
The initial things you can adjust are antenna's (using combo of polarized and directional antenna) and the power output. The max output you're allowed to use on a transmitter without getting certification varies depending on where you are in the world. I haven't ever used an "FPV relay" type system but with wifi relay's you always cut the bandwidth in half and introduce extra latency with each extra hop a message needs to take so I would generally avoid them if possible. Check out videos on "long range FPV" too along with what holtneil suggested or joshua bardwell on youtube (JB) has a lot of vids covering comparing the quality of different analog or digital FPV systems testing real world range on his property in the boonies.
As you said any obstacle between you and the quad will introduce some amount of signal degradation/loss since RF just electromagnetic waves follows the same physics as the visible spectrum of EM waves.
With regard to control signals ELRS (based on LoRA) https://github.com/ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS I think is the best option but is just the control signals and telemetry from the quad that you'd use that for so still need to solve the video feed issue separately
 
ELRS isn't an "absolute fix" but will typically extend the range to the point that the control signals become a non-issue but vid feed signals will be the limiting factor
 
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