Typical Range?

[Cargodog]

Hey folks, been worki g on some drone handli g practice so brought it up north to the cottage. Sunny day, winds calm, lake frozen.

So, with limited trees, and over the lake, I'm seeing lots of signal degradation and distances below what I would expect.

My signal at 50m height starts to break up and get intermittent loss of signal issues around 450m. And that's over an open body of water (or ice).

I'm using the stock controller with my phone and latest firmware. I can't identify any obvious sources of interference (I'm deep in the bush - so removed from most possible sources of issues).

Is this because I'm just using the out of box controller, or is there something else I should seek? I've read comments on 'shouldnt need a range extender' but I can't even hit half a km without starting to lose my feed.

Thanks!

 

[Thomas B]

Try it at a higher altitude... just to see if there is a difference, and be sure controller antenna is aimed at your drone. You should be able to get miles. Just stay VLOS.

 

[Camino Ken]

Under ideal conditions you should get close to the max specified of 8-10 Km. The two main things that can reduce this is interference and obstacles. In a remote area interference should be low so then the issue is obstacles. If you are experiencing signal degradation at 450m and you can see the drone it is likely that your drone or controller is defective. If you have obstacles between the drone and the controller then the max can be significantly decreased. Trees can dramatically reduce the signal strength mostly due to the water content in the trunk and leaves. I live in the forest and have done some pseudo scientific testing and found that the signal on my M2P can reduce by about half trying to penetrate between 5 to 10 full foliage trees, regardless of distance. As stated by Thomas B if you are maintaining a clear visual line of sight between the controller and the drone you shouldn’t have any range issues. If you are I would contact DJI.

 

[vindibona1]

That's incredibly short based on what I've experienced. While I don't typically go for distance flights I've done two with my Mavic 2 Pro and, without losing any signal got 8000 ft and 10,000 ft respectively (2450M/3000M). The shorter one was flown from a 2nd floor balcony with limited trees while the 10k on was over an open body of water. I'm sure I could have sent it further but didn't need to and both were at night and with strobes within VLOS, but 10,000 was the farthest I could keep my eye on it.

 

[Steve M]

I had a similar problem mentioned in another thread, it ended up going to the shop for an expensive main circuit board fault.

 

[Cymru]

Antenna positioning is likely it.
Make use of the radar display to make sure its orientated directly towards the drone and make sure its beam on to the flat side as much as possible.

Anything containing water or metal - trees, bushes, chicken wire fences can knock the range down to a few hundred metres too.