RANGE CHECKING

[thevon]

I thought to range check the new Nemesis this arvo and it was pretty poor. Could only get to less than 20 paces and it would glitch up. Not sure if I'm being paranoid but I thought that wasn't good enough. I was a bit sus about the old Hitec Supreme Superslim Rx in it - pretty beaten up, so I got another one out of a glider I hardly use which is in excellent condition and put it in. But exactly the same result. I have the aerial wound round the carbon fuse and hanging out about 8 inches. I thought it must be long enough - it's longer than the stock one. Scratched my head and wondered if I'd made the aerial too long. Cut about 4inches off and it was worse! So since I don't have any more Rx's to play with I soldered another foot or so of wire on, and hey presto, instantly better. Weird. Looking forward to trying it in the air.

[sf2]

range checking always seems a bit arbitary to me, I was flying a new model today with a reduced antenna size, but a special fitment to keep the range. So I did the ol range check at about fifty metres(paces) seemed ok, as I walked back I saw the antenna was up a small amount, fully closed it, back to fifty paces or so, no joy, 48 was ok tho'
I chucked it off any how and all seemed ok, but then I have had models that range check ok and seem to blank in flight.
Just a question tho' wrapping the antenna around the outside of a carbon model, does that work succesfully enough, or do you still need the "rats" tail ? is there some way of beating the carbon effect ?

[thevon]

I'm really not sure. General opinion seems to be that if' it's a carbon fuse you need to exit the aerial out of the fuse, and also have it dangling. Ezza did a lot of research to get his Opus working best and found that dividing the aerial at the tail and running it thru the hinge gap of each V-tail side, and having a dangly bit hanging from the end of each side was the best. With my foamies I get the aerial totally blocked if I have big carbon spars and dragspar and if I run the aerial split to each wingtip then have it dangle back a bit from each tip, it's perfect.

[bananaman]

I have had a lot of trouble with certain receivers in certain models.
I mostly fly carbon F3B Types and standard crystal JR receivers are atrocious. I've gone to synthesized (only match in a signal clean environment) and high end dual conversion now and have much less trouble. Some receivers don't like carbon.

Still need to extend the aerial though. Carbon attenuates the signal so you need to add a bit to the aerial to make up the effective length. I've found the amount to start with is about half the aerial length, BUT you need to play a bit with the length to find what is best.

Note, that is another half length of aerial past the last of the carbon layup. So up the fin or v-tail is included in the extended length. Running the aerial outside or inside the fuselage didn't make much difference, still had to add some out the back.

On a Victor I had, I needed to run the aerial up and down the fin post (don't cross the wire) a couple of times and extend to get it to behave.

[sf2]

I've always wondered about splitting the aerial, or somthing similar, If I attach another areial to the connection point in the reciever and run one on one wing and the other on the other wing, would that amount to the same thing ?


I've got foamies at the moment and they have carbon spars, two in each wing and one each side of the fuse, with the fuse outside seems to present no probs,but I am trying to get rid of the bit hanging out the end, but yet to use carbon, although that's not to far away.