Long Range Systems

by Nonamerc | July 11, 2012 | (16) Posted in Projects

So you want your to do long range/medium range flights on your Bixler?

It's a big investment so first of all do you want to spend the money for a long range system?

What do you need for long range FPV?

- UHF System

- FPV System

- Stable Plane

- Money and soldering skills

 

UHF System:

There are a few UHF (Ultra High Frequency) systems on the market.

- Dragonlink



+ Proven quality
+ Made in the USA
+ Free receivers if you/friends buy from dragonlink
+- Compatible with dragonOSD (Really hard to setup, manual is HUGE)
- Filtering of the EZuhf is better
- Bad costumer service
- People have allot of issues with dragonlink V2 


Price:
269$ No diveristy 12 CH

- EZuhf



++ Spectrum analyser
++ Extreme hopping this mode uses allot bigger portion of the band (430-450MHz)
+ Programable radio update the software yourself
+ Selectable frequencies: 431-433 MHz 433-435 MHz  435-437 MHz 436-438 MHz
+ Legall versions for UK and Germany
+ Proven quality (Used by trappy)
+ Compatible with EZosd for RSSI (easy to setup)
+ Better filtering for 1.2 GHz and 900 MHz
-  Costs allot more

Price:
319.99$ 8 Channel no diversity 
339.99$ 8 Channel diversity 

- Chainlink Dare



+ Cheap only 150$
+ Updatable software
+ Standard diversity
+ Compatible with cyclops osd for RSSI measurement
- Bad filtering (people cant fly chainlink and ezuhf together, chainlink will get failsafe because of bad filtering, also allot less range)
- Not compatible with 1.2 GHz and 900 MHz (Failsafe after 200M)
(There are some people who have no problems at all but the risk for me is just to big)

Price:
150.00$ 11 channels，9 channels for control signal ，1 channel for PPM

My conclusion:

If you have the money go for EZuhf, if you want a cheaper uhf system go for dragonlink. I don't advice you to buy Chainlink Dare.

I hope that this was educational.
This took me 3.5 hours to write be sure to rate this and leave some constructive criticism.

Note:
I am dutch not english so please ignore my crappy english.

Nonamerc
My youtube channel (will open in a new window)

Updated: 10th June 2013

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COMMENTS

Gersio on July 13, 2012
Hey dutch, your English is very good. Even a Brazilian guy can enjoy, understand and use the article as a base if somebody is planning to get into long range flights.
By the way, I fully agree with your perception / evaluation.
Congrats
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Nonamerc on July 14, 2012
Thank you very much for your comment. Yea it took me a long time to write the article because sometimes I dont know how to say a word in english and I will need to rewrite a whole sentence.
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NicolasOtala on June 1, 2013
I agree with Gersio! I think that a lot of people who know English their entire lives still are not as good as you, even with spell check! You are also being a tremendous support for the hobby because I am just one of those people who are too lazy to post entire well informed articles! By the way, do you think you can do a review on a Tom Sherrer UHF?
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gordoalfredo on July 16, 2012
Thanks for the info! Crappy enlish is mine!
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Ashjay75 on July 26, 2012
Thanks for the review on the UHF systems for FPV.

I have a SkyWalker FPV setup, I purchased a Chain Link Dare system and fitted it to a JRPCMX10 radio.
First 2 flights was very successful. On the 3rd flight 3 minuts into the flight I lost control of the elevator. It done a few loops and came to rest in a tree un damaged lucky enough.

I then done some testing on the ground with everything turned on and every few minutes the elevator goes to full up position for around 10 seconds and then I have control again. The instalation of the CLD and my radio I made sure was perfect.

Im now doing research for a quality UHF system and Looks to me like EZuhf has great reviews.

Thanx for your valuable info..


Ashjay75
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Nonamerc on August 6, 2012
Go with ezuhf its a good investment, the spectrum analyser is really usefull!!
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NicolasOtala on June 1, 2013
A for real spectrum analyzer?!?! I thought those were worth thousands of dollars!
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colorex on July 13, 2012
Great article! I'm not that much into long range, but it's good to have a comparison available.

The images are not showing up - if you post the links to the images in a comment, I'll fix that for you.
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Nonamerc on July 14, 2012
Thank you colorex,

First pic: http://www.terranova.net/~winger/RCVideoStore/DragonLink/Installation/DragonLinkOnTransmitter3.JPG

Second pic:
http://www.bracky.net/images/ezuhf.JPG

Third pic:
http://static.rcgroups.net/forums/attachments/2/6/3/4/4/3/a4408276-39-ChainLinkDare%201.jpg?d=1320934216

Thanks again
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colorex on July 14, 2012
Pictures should work now.
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Nonamerc on July 14, 2012
thx man
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RCTakeOff on July 22, 2012
There is also Thomas Scherrer OZ2CPU UHF
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Nonamerc on August 6, 2012
Yeah but these are the 3 "most" used lrc systems we also have rmilec
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migsey on July 15, 2012
Very nice man. You did a great job
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Nonamerc on July 16, 2012
Thank you for your comment
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hasamalvides on December 1, 2012
Hi Nonamerc, great article. I already got some FPV systems Immersion and FPV Fever (600mW and 500mW) and both on 5.8Ghz frequency.
I read on dragonlik webpage that 5.8Ghz is not for long range flight, actually mine gets blurry when i´m 600 meters away.
They said that the best is 1.2Ghz, What do you think about? if that is right what would you recommend (a particular brand) to get and how mane mW do i should consider.
I do not want to attemp to get a new world record but at least 5 kms will be great.

Thanks a lot for your help.

Hans, from Lima, Peru
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Nonamerc on December 2, 2012
Hi Hans,
Just send me an email and I will send you some links of the gear that's good to use and which UHF system you should use. Also read my article fpv frequencies for dummies it has some good information to.
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Nonamerc on December 2, 2012
My email is: nonamerc.info@gmail.com
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Flight4Life on January 9, 2013
Be careful when using 1.2Ghz with a 433MHz RC system, because the third harmonic is around that band (1.2GHz-1.3GHz).. I'd recommend using 2.4GHz if you're not flying with other 2.4ghz systems around (I mean RC, WiFi routers aren't powerful enough, if even the same frequency). Then again, check the laws of your country, and don't forget that the UHF may be filtered against other frequencies, not the other way around.
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Nonamerc on January 9, 2013
UHF systems such as EZuhf have really good filtering. When i'm using the spectrum analyser software I see no difference when I have my 1.2 GHz transmitter turned on. In theory it would but because of the filtering you won't notic anything. Most other quality UHF systems dont have problems with 1.2 GHz because of the filtering.
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Flight4Life on January 9, 2013
Ik heb het over het feit dat 1.2ghz/1.3ghz rond de derde harmonie zit van de UHF, de UHF is dan wel gefilterd tegen andere frequenties, maar kan zelf nog wel andere frequenties tegenzitten (bijv.: 866MHz, 1299MHz)
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NicolasOtala on June 1, 2013
I love the article! You did a very informative job and I am quite easily sold with the EZ UHF when I have the money! After thinking about how you said that the Dragon Link lacks filtering, I found it funny how the people selling the Dragon Link blamed interference issues on the customers for not using the best video systems on the market.
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Nonamerc on June 10, 2013
Thanks allot for your comment. I should probably update the article because some things have changed since i wrote it :)
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h_vestbo on July 2, 2013
And with the new fw, you get 12 channels from EZuhf as well;)
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Nonamerc

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Long Range Systems