Quamera
lvl.2
Australia
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C. Dave Pappas Posted at 2017-1-23 16:57
Ok, I noticed the same thing when I bought my P4. I could get out to 1200' to 1500' and then start having major signal issues. I bought the signal reflectors from Best Buy, but that didn't seem to help much at all. I always fly out in front of my house, either straight out or off to the left or the right. It didn't matter. Well, as you can imagine, 30 to 40 flights later after trying several different things, I'm getting rather upset because if I remember correctley, Dji advertises 4 miles! So, I decided lets have a look out back behind my house. Well, behind my house is a valley, not much in elevation change, maybe 75 to 100'. But, I can fly straight out behind my house over the valley and I don't reach the other side until about 6,000 to 7,000' away which is about the same elevation from my house. I can fly the entire 7,000 feet out and back without signal loss. So, your enviroment does play a huge factor in distance. Trees, shadows from trees, buildings, wifi signals and density in your area, and terrain. If you can, find a wide open area that has line of sight visibility for 5,000 to 10,000' or more. You will most likely retain your signal the whole way too.
Helpful post Dave, we have no electronic interference on a rural property but trees reduce the useful range of my P4 from thousands of metres to just hundreds so I am learning to work with that. So long as there is an area of treeless land in front of the remote I can go out over a kilometer but I do like to stand under a shady tree to see my device more clearly and that can affect range as well. Ideally I would set up the operating area on the side of a hill or valley for some extra range but we are almost perfectly flat and I don't have that option here.
Because my memory is nothing to be proud of I did check DJIs claimed range for the P4 and found it is 3.1 miles or 5 km unobstructed and free of interference. Obviously that is rare in the real world but there are some unmodified Phantom 4s out there (in distance record land) that have actually gone a fair bit further that and made it home again so it can be done. |
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