Covert Drones Installs Amplified 2.5w Antenna Boosters INSIDE your remote.

[AZDave]

I just checked the Covert Drones website ... I didn't even have to call them. They get almost all of their actual receive gain FROM THE EXTERNAL ANTENNA! They have the plots and specs that show it. The antenna gives either 10 dBi or 12dBi gain depending on the band, but we're not talking simply an amplifier in the RC like other posters here seem to have thought. Yes ... they have an amplifier for receive as well as for transmit, but I guarantee that the antenna is doing all of the real work for receive since the receive amplifier would be amplifiying incoming noise as well as signal. The only way that the receive amplifier would make a significant difference is if the receive amplifier has a lower noise figure (the noise it creates itself) than the receive input of the stock controller does ... which I find unlikely.

It's obvious that this thread has mashed up more than one approaches to these range extenders and that has made things confusing. One outfit puts amplifiers in both the drone and the controller, and the other uses a combination of gain antennas and amplifiers only at the controller, but the bottom line is that a transmit-only amplifier in the controller without any external gain antenna doesn't make physical sense like some here have claimed.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Transmission Power (EIRP)
2.4 GHz:
FCC: ≤30 dBm
CE: ≤20 dBm
SRRC: ≤20 dBm
MIC: ≤20 dBm
5.8 GHz:
FCC: ≤30 dBm
CE: ≤14 dBm
SRRC: ≤29 dBm

Max Transmission Distance
12 km (FCC), 8 km (CE)

So with the way you are looking at it, changing from CE mode to FCC mode should not make any difference.
I wonder why countries that are stuck in CE mode would want the more power that FCC mode offers then?
I ask you why do you think adding more power to FCC mode will not have any effect?
Adding a Amp to the existing antennas will improve distance and reliable signal.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

I just checked the Covert Drones website ... I didn't even have to call them. They get almost all of their actual receive gain FROM THE EXTERNAL ANTENNA!

What part of their advertisement do you not understand?

 

[AZDave]

What part of their advertisement do you not understand?
View attachment 134026

The Covert Drones website has page after page of range extenders, and their pull down menu lists only "amplified antennas" and "non-amplified antennas". I picked the most predominant one as an example.

You show the ONLY offering that claims to have two amplifiers (or what they call a bidirectional amplifier) that supposedly works with the stock antennas, but they don't explain in the least how amplifying signal plus noise gives you anything except more signal and more noise. They also don't have a single user review for that item yet.

But they give an email address for support questions, so I'm sending them a request for more details and will post here whatever they answer.

 

[Apostol.]

@AZDave I think you already know the answer, you said it yourself, amplifying the receiving signal will only give more noise and most definitely a worse SNR. But i don't think that's the selling point here.

Amplifying the TX is the main goal and if it works as intended it would be indeed useful.
Imagine a situation where you are not near signal loss, but lets say that you are under a tree or something, or you forget to point the remote towards the drone or adjust the antennas.
Having an amplified signal might mitigate signal loss in some of those scenarios for the RC anyway.

That was my goal with those NLD boosters (the same one covert drones puts inside the remote) and it did make perfect sense, boosting the signal from both directions, but we all saw what happened with that.

By the way NLD went silent, i escalated the case with PayPal to a claim, i hope PayPal refunds me.
I urge everybody to stay away from NLD and their products.

Btw @AZDave what's your opinion on fitting high gain omni antennas with sma connectors on the RC(unamplified)?Say a 7dbi or 15dbi.
Is a dual band omni antenna a thing? I see many omni antennas claiming 2.4/5ghz support.

Thanks.

 

[AZDave]

@AZDave I think you already know the answer, you said it yourself, amplifying the receiving signal will only give more noise and most definitely a worse SNR. But i don't think that's the selling point here.

Amplifying the TX is the main goal and if it works as intended it would be indeed useful.
Imagine a situation where you are not near signal loss, but lets say that you are under a tree or something, or you forget to point the remote towards the drone or adjust the antennas.
Having an amplified signal might mitigate signal loss in some of those scenarios for the RC anyway.

That was my goal with those NLD boosters (the same one covert drones puts inside the remote) and it did make perfect sense, boosting the signal from both directions, but we all saw what happened with that.

By the way NLD went silent, i escalated the case with PayPal to a claim, i hope PayPal refunds me.
I urge everybody to stay away from NLD and their products.

Btw @AZDave what's your opinion on fitting high gain omni antennas with sma connectors on the RC(unamplified)?Say a 7dbi or 15dbi.
Is a dual band omni antenna a thing? I see many omni antennas claiming 2.4/5ghz support.

Thanks.

Well, amplifying the transmit signal certainly helps in one direction, but in theory (note that I said "in theory") path loss is reciprocal ... i.e., equal in both directions. I can think of situations where that might not be the case for brief instances, but in general being under a tree should absorb the signal going in both directions, and not pointing the remote towards the drone should affect both signals as well. An amplifier does, however, as you say take the uncertainty out of one direction.

Can you give me an example (i.e., link) of a set of omnidirectional antennas that have passive gain? It is physically impossible to achieve passive gain without some sort of directionality in at least one plane. Most passive gain antennas I've seen for drones are clip on Yagis, and those definitely work but they need to be pointed in the direction of the drone. It is entirely possible to have an antenna that sacrifices gain in the vertical plane (i.e., up and down) to achieve gain that is omnidirectional in the horizontal plane (azimuth), but in general it is difficult to achieve much gain that way without something that sticks up pretty high in the air. Colinear arrays work, but they don't have much gain ... certainly not 15 dBi. I think anything above 4 or 6 dBi would be unlikely. But if you can give me an example I'll be happy to check it out. In general, I'm strongly in favor of passive gain antennas for their cost/performance ratio (not to mention their simplicity to install) compared to amplifier solutions.

 

[AZDave]

[

Btw @AZDave what's your opinion on fitting high gain omni antennas with sma connectors on the RC(unamplified)?Say a 7dbi or 15dbi.
Is a dual band omni antenna a thing? I see many omni antennas claiming 2.4/5ghz support.

Thanks.

Apostol, I thought of something else that I should have mentioned in my post immediately above.

You've had your controller disassembled and know what is inside, including what the antennas look like, right? Assuming they are small and depending upon where they are located, it it entirely possible that external antennas (vertically oriented ones) could have a modest amount of pattern gain sacrificed from the vertical plane in addition to much better efficiency due to being outside of the controller and completely in the clear. I don't know if you could get an additional 15 dBi that way, but I wouldn't rule it out amd 7 dBi would probably be cake.

 

[AZDave]

I also have experience using amps just on the RC. They do work by at least doubling the range on some RC's, not all but some. Your mile may very. I have one setup with just stock antennas (not DJI) and it performs one heck of a lot better then un-amped. You seem to think you know what your talking about but you don't. Like GadgetGuy said "Fact is it works."
Sorry you cannot wrap your head around it but you really need to stop bashing a company like Covert Drones and a product that you obviously have no hands on experience with.
CALL OR TEXT them
24/7 Customer Service

+1 (612) 816-0039

I'm sure they will be happy to answer any of your questions.

In every one of his posts GadgetGuy talked ONLY about amplified external antennas ... antennas that have their own passive gain from directionality. He never said that an amplifier only in the controller with stock antennas works. I didn't catch that myself the first time around. My mistake.

But you started this thread by posting an ad for a system that amplifies only within the controller and only uses the stock antennas, and I got involved only by asking how that could work and listing reason why (at least on the surface) it shouldn't. That unit is brand new, you said you don't have one, and there are no reviews for it on the vendor's web site. We will see if the CovertDrones answers my email, but in the meantime neither you, nor GadgetGuy, nor anyone else outside the company knows how or even if it works.

 

[Apostol.]

Can you give me an example (i.e., link) of a set of omnidirectional antennas that have passive gain? It is physically impossible to achieve passive gain without some sort of directionality in at least one plane. Most passive gain antennas I've seen for drones are clip on Yagis, and those definitely work but they need to be pointed in the direction of the drone. It is entirely possible to have an antenna that sacrifices gain in the vertical plane (i.e., up and down) to achieve gain that is omnidirectional in the horizontal plane (azimuth), but in general it is difficult to achieve much gain that way without something that sticks up pretty high in the air. Colinear arrays work, but they don't have much gain ... certainly not 15 dBi. I think anything above 4 or 6 dBi would be unlikely. But if you can give me an example I'll be happy to check it out. In general, I'm strongly in favor of passive gain antennas for their cost/performance ratio (not to mention their simplicity to install) compared to amplifier solutions.

Hey Dave thanks for the reply.
This one in particular peaked my interest, somehow its dual band, also has pictures of signal directionality on both bands.

https://www.amazon.com/SIS-Antenna-7dBi-Directional-Frequency/dp/B01GQRDGBK

Given that i live in Europe and those seem to be low volume i dont think i can get my hands on them.

The other type of antenna is the one i am sure you are familiar with, the whip style.
E.g. this one :
2.4 GHz WiFi Omnidirectional Antenna, 7dBi, RP-SMA
Specifies beam width of 360 horizontal 17 vertical , so its 360 but very tight.

Installing those type of antennas is a 10 minute job, especially since i know the remote inside out by this point.

 

[Apostol.]

Apostol, I thought of something else that I should have mentioned in my post immediately above.

You've had your controller disassembled and know what is inside, including what the antennas look like, right?

The antennae of the mavic/mavic 2 RC are 2 inches tall, flat and 3 inches apart from each other.
The numerous times i opened the remote i didn't see the insides of the antennae (i did not take them apart, nor i believe you can without destroying them) only the cable coming from them with ipex connector at the end.

I believe the have a figure 8 pattern on the horizontal plane and from my experience a not-so-narrow vertical width, guestimmating here i would say about 60 degrees.
Also (on the mavic 2 atleast) they must be dual band since the drone/rc is.

 

[Apostol.]

(Mod Removed Language) wrong links, and editing puts the post in limbo awaiting for mod approval..
You can find the post on your mail.

Also very interesting:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alfa-APA-M25-directional-connector-WL-ANT-157/dp/B00R1PA9EO/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&keywords=SIS+Antenna+-+7dBi+Gain+Omni+Directional+WiFi+Antenna+(Frequency:+2.4+GHz+/+5GHz)&linkCode=gs3&qid=1629936162&sr=8-8

 

[AZDave]

Apostol,

The first unit is VERY interesting. The feedpoint is at one end but it uses stripline transmission line techniques (common for microwave frequencies) to bring the feed to the center of the board. You can see that the stripline width is tapered to provide an impedance transformation for best energy transfer. The feed from the center then goes to four vertical half wavelength dipoles for each band ... 2.4 gHz and 5 gHz ... tow dipoles up top and two at the bottom. One side of the board has quarter wavelength elements and the other side of the board has the other quarter wavelength elements. Together they make center fed halfwave dipoles.

From there I can't tell exactly what happens, but on the surface it looks like the adjacent pairs of dipoles are fed in phase, which would give a broadside figure-8 pattern in the horizontal (azimuth) plane. The upper pairs versus the lower pairs are also fed in phase which would give a squished pattern vertically ... but normally retain the broadside figure-8 pattern in the horizontal plane. However, something else is going on. The upper pairs of dipoles are shorter than the lower pairs, and there are other strips that aren't obvious to me. If those differences cause the upper pairs of dipoles to be fed out of phase instead of in phase, then one set of dipoles has gain perpendicular to the other ... essentially filling out the pattern horizontally while still having the gain from the squished vertical pattern. It all looks pretty clever.

The second antenna appears to be a vertical colinear array ... two or more vertical dipoles in line with each other and fed in phase. That's what I was talking about in my earlier post, and if it has three dipoles or more and was built well it could reach 7 dBi omnidirectional gain in the horizontal plane and a squished pattern in the vertical plane.

Personally, I like the first one better simply because somebody took the trouble to design something that doesn't allow much room for manufacturing error. The fact that somebody cared enough to do the impedance transformation with the stripline is also a plus in my book. The colinear antenna could have more variability depending upon how precise somebody was in the feed for the inline dipoles to make sure they are actually fed in phase, but if done right it would definitely be omnidirectional.

I can't tell much about the third antenna in your edited post since the pictures in the link don't show much. But if I had to guess, the fact that it's fairly large and flat suggests to me that it is made from a few dipoles in front of a planar metallic reflector ... pretty much like some TV antennas use. In any case, that kind of antenna works fine and gives decent gain, but it isn't omnidirectional and the listing even says the beamwidth is 66 degrees in the horizontal plane.

Hope some small part of this helps.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Truthfully with OcuSync 3.0 I really do not know why anyone needs a Amped system. I find it performs as well as one of my Amped systems right out of the box. It's actually scary how far you can fly with it. I do notice the drone seems to be directional with its antennas. In the picture below where the arrow is I dropped from a 5 bar reading to a 4 bar reading. As soon as I turned towards home point it went right back to a 5 bar reading. No real tests on this but it was something I noticed on one of my flights.
View attachment 134004

Completely agree that even OcuSync 2.0 needs no amplification or external antenna setup. OcuSync 3.0 is even better. It is only older 2.4Ghz systems like Lightbridge and Autel's wifi 2.4Ghz that require better antennas with amplification to achieve the incredible stock range of OcuSync 2.0 and 3.0.

 

[GadgetGuy]

No ... by "antennas" I meant the simple Yagi antennas that clip to the existing antennas. They are passive and give gain in both directions.

An amplifier connected to the existing antennas alone does NOT improve the return signal from the drone.

As best I can tell, the add on Itelite antenna panels you use DO provide gain ... both for transmit and receive ... but that gain has nothing to do with the amplifier. The amplifier by itself provides additional gain for the outgoing signal, but whatever improvement there is for the return signal from the drone is entirely due to the Itelite antenna panel.

Tell me this ... what is your maximum range for the stock drone and controller, what is it for the amplifier without the Itelite antenna, what is it for the Itelite antenna alone, and what is it for the combination of the amplifier and the Itelite antenna? I suspect you will just make up some numbers, but I had to ask. Unless you have done a comparison of all four cases over the same terrain you don't really know where your additional range is coming from.

I never said anything about my connecting an amplifier to any existing antennas. Not sure where you got that notion from. In all cases, the existing antennas of the GL300 RC were replaced with external directional antennas which were then amplified.

I already gave you the range for the stock RC antennas. 1.5-3 miles. With a boosted external directional antenna, the range increased to over 5 miles. I didn't bother to test the range without the boosters, as I was only interested in maximum range. No modifications were made to the drones, except to add external batteries to support the increased range, and avoid suicide missions!

 

[GadgetGuy]

In every one of his posts GadgetGuy talked ONLY about amplified external antennas ... antennas that have their own passive gain from directionality. He never said that an amplifier only in the controller with stock antennas works. I didn't catch that myself the first time around. My mistake.

But you started this thread by posting an ad for a system that amplifies only within the controller and only uses the stock antennas, and I got involved only by asking how that could work and listing reason why (at least on the surface) it shouldn't. That unit is brand new, you said you don't have one, and there are no reviews for it on the vendor's web site. We will see if the CovertDrones answers my email, but in the meantime neither you, nor GadgetGuy, nor anyone else outside the company knows how or even if it works.

Thank you for admitting your mistake. I can only speak to what I know, and what has worked for me in the past.

CovertDrones is a long time reputable vendor for products that improve range and signal stability. If you have emailed Lucas, I am sure he will respond and answer your questions. I can personally vouch for him and his integrity in all my dealings with him. NLD, not so much! I'll let Lucas answer all your questions about how his latest offering works, since I know nothing about it, other than if he says it works, it works!

 

[uavbooster]

The discussion here is really lively, it is good to have so many enthusiasts. Thank you all.

 

[uavbooster]

I declare again. I have used an amplifier. It is a very useful product. Especially in areas with severe disturbances. And it does not need to be aimed at the drone. That's very tiring. If someone slanders me again. I will sue him.
Maybe your problem is related to your installation and use. Maybe you didn't follow the safe installation process. Destroyed this amplifier. I have met many self-righteous people. Destroyed the product. It would be unethical to slander a company and a product in this way.

 

[uavbooster]

这些年来，他们似乎有所改善。我已经运行 Sunhans 放大器多年，2017 年是我的第一次安装。运行一个单独的电池，他们会很快耗尽它。它不漂亮，但它完成了工作 LOL
View attachment 133722

View attachment 133723

This kind of amplifier is not designed for drones, because it is heavy and consumes a lot of power, it can only be installed in RC, and the effect is not satisfactory.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

This kind of amplifier is not designed for drones, because it is heavy and consumes a lot of power, it can only be installed in RC, and the effect is not satisfactory.

Who are you and what are you talking about? LOL This has been used for many years and works perfectly on the Yuneec controller.

 

[Apostol.]

Who are you and what are you talking about? LOL This has been used for many years and works perfectly on the Yuneec controller.

Apparently he is very satisfied with NLDs kit. And he is from CA LOL.
Not fishy at all.