idillicah
lvl.1
Paraguay
Offline
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Well, I've finally been able to build TTT's WindSurfer and get out to fly. This is with the Magic Power mode at 24db on both bird and controller.
Some very, very interesting results. And confusing as well.
Notes:
a) I know some pictures say "Controller signal weak". Just bad timing with the screen captures. Every screen capture was with the drone pushed as far as it'd go.
b) All flights performed during the same day, same FW, same flying conditions, minutes apart. Same battery, same app version. Only variant is the drone.
c) This is post fresh flash of FW 1.9.20, fresh Magic Power install on top of that, and fresh install of the Go app (latest version).
b) Before the first flight, I did a compass calibration and a controller frequency re-sync.
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Flight 1: No Windsurfer.
Distance until signal lost: 412m
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Flight 2: Windsurfer installed
Distance until signal lost: 413m
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I then performed another 2 flights, one without the Windsurfer, and another one with.
3rd flight: No windsurfer
Distance to signal lost: 280m
4th flight: Windsurfer installed
Distance to signal lost: 296m
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So I started to ask myself, "is the windsurfer even doing anything?" And I thought a good way to answer that was to go as far as I could without the windsurfer installed, and then install it while the drone was in the air, and see if I could get it to go any further.
This is the original Signal Lost distance (351m):
And this is THE SAME FLIGHT after installing the Windsurfer while the drone was still in the air (504m!):
I then did one last test without the Windsurfer, and I got 290m.
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Thoughts on the Windsurfer: I'm not 100% sold on it. It seems to sometimes do something, but I wouldn't bank on it. I'll keep it in my case and see if I can apply it in the field and see a noticeable difference. In the meantime, I think the other solutions were FAR more effective.
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MY FINDINGS (and how I got twice the distance from my bird... YMMV):
1. If you've recently upgraded FW and see poorer performance, it's not a bad idea to force a fresh flash of the latest FW via the DEBUG file method. This is something I do quite often on other machines (like my Android phone) due to conflicts that arise from gradual upgrades. I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU BRICKING YOUR BIRD! If you're gonna do this, you better know what you're doing.
2. Before every flight, do the following:
a) re-calibrate the compass
b) re-sync the remote controller frequency.
I know that's old advice, but it really does make a huge difference.
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And that's about all she wrote. I want to thank @Peterx for his tip about a fresh FW flash, @Mark the Droner for his interesting Windsurfer design discussion, and I hope @FatherXmas, @fans6548b447 and djiuser_krPVXymrsWtq can benefit from this little experiment.
See you in the skies, boys and girls! |
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