Sander Style EZUHF antenna placement on a Straight Wing platform (skywalker)

[Mictronics]

I agree with you guys about separation of RX and VTX, but I see no advantage in putting the RX itself out on the wing.

The OP is talking about the Skywalker, and let's assume the wing is removable, so there are quite some cables to (dis-)connect when attaching/removing the wing. At least 3 and up to 5 if pan/tilt is installed. Depending on how far you have the RX out in the wing you need either to disconnect on the RX which requires to remove the wiring as well or have a second pair of connectors on the wing center.

Another thought, servo connectors are all the same, so there is a good chance for mistakes when you connect them to the RX, hopefully a pre-flight check will discover prior to take-off.

I have 4 connectors, 2 MCX for antennas, one MPX for aileron servos and a third one for VTX, all different and can be plugged only in one way.

Just my 2ct...

[noriega]

use a ppm decoder like http://www.foxtechfpv.com/index.php?...roducts_id=403 (i think roberto on this board has a design of its own as well)
this way you have just the power and the ppm signal going in the wing. i used this on my ez*, having the ezuhf rx in the tail and the video tx in the front (no weight out in the wings and just power, ground and ppm to the tail)

[Hucker]

+1 on what noriega says (I use roberto's decoder). I have 2 servos in each wing and a vtx on one and an rx on the other. With a ppm decoder I have one multiplex connection on one side and two on the other. It takes me 1 minute to get the wings on and most of that is finding and tightening the screws. BTW this includes an RSSI signal back to the fuselage. PPM decoder rock.

[ajhaggerty]

use a ppm decoder like http://www.foxtechfpv.com/index.php?...roducts_id=403 (i think roberto on this board has a design of its own as well)
this way you have just the power and the ppm signal going in the wing. i used this on my ez*, having the ezuhf rx in the tail and the video tx in the front (no weight out in the wings and just power, ground and ppm to the tail)

I'm confused. Ok so what connects to what. The EZRx still sits in the wing... except only one wire runs back to the fuselage instead of 4-5 servo connectors? Is that right? The inside the fuselage the ppm decoder sends out the individual pwm servo signals?

[Hucker]

You got it. Check the schematic on this thread. It shows how to setup a full house glider with the RX on the wing. This many servos is usually a worst case scenario and would normally have 5 servo wires routed out to the wing (and 2 stay on the wing) which sucks. With the ppm decoder you can wire the servos on the wing with rx to the RX and run a single servo wire to the ppm decoder in fuselage and wire the rest from there. Since the ppm decoder is 1/2 the size of the ezrx there is more space to work with in the fuselage and one less wire.

On an ez* the benefit is that you only have one servo wire out to the wing rather than 3 (or 4 if you have ailerons). It takes a little while to wrap your head around it but it does work well and for complex planes it really simplifies things (zeeflyboy's euro fighter). Roberto might have more decoders and if that doesn't work foxtech sells one too.

[ajhaggerty]

Awesome guys thank you so much I'll look into that!

[Jonis]

Another idea: I put my EzUHF way back on the tail boom, just in front of the vertical stabilizer, with two Sander's Style antennas.

My Vtx and Camera are on the nose. This helped increase my range.

[ajhaggerty]

So it turns out I may already have a great solution in my possession! I use the ardupilotmega 2.0 (the newer purple one). After you guys mentioned a ppm decoder I took a look at the APM features to see if it can decode my EZUHF signal. It has decoder functionality but I want to make sure it's the correct type (standard ppm stream is "inverted" signal?)

Can you guys who know more about ppm/pwm lore comment on this? I saw a thread where Sander mentioned the ez ppm sum is a 3v signal and captainplanethd comments how the ardupilot is a 5v system. He mentioned using a pullup resistor or diode with some success.... but I have no idea about which components to buy to boost the voltage of the signal. Any suggestions there would be great as well!

Thanks again guys! I think this way I'll be able to put the Rx on the wing and use a single wire back to the APM inside the fuselage.

edit: Here is the above mentioned thread http://fpvlab.com/forums/showthread....l-output/page2