Found the limit of my Futaba 72mhz control system today...

[AaronHartwell]

Hucker and I went out this morning to get some flying in. He wanted to try out a couple of new antennas on his base station and do some more tweaking on his second Radian Pro.

I wanted to set a new personal distrance record and try to find the edge of my video and/or radio control. I'm flying with a 72mhz Futaba radio using a semi-common Futaba PCM receiver. I figured I'd radio before video but wasn't sure. Turned out they both seemed to be going at roughly the same spot.

At 2km the plane's receiver went into failsafe mode. I can tell because the FS is set to put throttle at 0% and put the plane in a slow gentle left turn. To add some buffer so that I could recover after failsafe I had my transmitter antenna collapsed one section and was pointing it directly at the plane. When I hit failsafe I extended the antenna and pointed it up. I flew to 2.68 km at which point the video in my goggles was starting to get snowy and Hucker lost video altogether (he was tracking with his base station providing an extra pair of eyes). I turned around at that point.

I LOVE this distance stuff. What a rush. I need UHF...

Because it's not real unless there's a video, here's a video with commentary:
http://youtu.be/b8Z7SixD8j4

Aaron

[Fusionman]

Wow...now I want to see where my 72mhz straight FM will reach, PCM usually drop out sooner. Sound like a ground test would be good first.

[hugy]

Did 5km on futaba 35mhz pcm al stock. Which receiver and tx are you using? Should be able to get further.

[justabigham]

Nice video Aaron.....

[WildWill]

Awesome Aaron! Be very careful.

[AaronHartwell]

Fusion - You should! Let us know how it goes!

Hugy - Nice! I'm using a Futaba 9CAP with a 8 or 9 channel Futaba PCM receiver. I'll look later when I'm home to see which one it is. I extended the antenna from 1/4 wavelength to 1/2 wavelength to get a bit more range out of it using a formula IBCrazy gave me. I was expecting to get somewhere between 2-3 miles with it.

Wild - Thanks! I will!

[airtruksrus]

Aaron, you don't want dejavu of last Saturday... Wait, my planes on uhf now. Great job on getting the distance out on 72mhz. Was considering doing the same thing since the 72 doesn't lock up and could probably use it to check the overall video on a lesser plane.

[AaronHartwell]

Air - No doubt!! Were you on 72mhz when your plane went down at Mt. Si? I'm sorry I missed that. I had to get the little guy home.

[airtruksrus]

Nope, just found the limits on the FrSky with the 1280 video. It really does cut down on the range. I think the Vtx might have caused the rx to get blanked out.

[Hucker]

I am so glad this wasn't a story about you going out again and losing your plane! I was very stressed reading the OP. That said Aaron and I have been flying together with completely redundant sets of video RX's. I'm watching him when he flys and he watches me when I fly (obviously we both have 2.4 video systems). A good security blanket and also good for messing around with aiming antennas. I was quite surprised how sensitive it is. When he was 2km out when I moved my directional antenna I could only move a small amount L/R before losing video. Far more sensitive than I thought.