The range for the 3DR air modules is states as about 1mi. This assumes a pair of modules -- one on the ground and one in the air. It is my understanding that increasing the antenna gain by 6dB will roughly double the range. What is we had a 18dB yagi antenna (about 36 inches long) on the ground that was pointed at the drone? The initial datalink connectivity would pass the drone position and a az/el positioner would point the yagi at the drone. This would provide a geodetic vector so that we could do the pointing to extreme precision. Because the commercial available 18dB yagis have about 23 deg beamwidth, we should be able to really improve the range.
Does this make sense? Has anyone ever tried it?
--- Jim
Replies
Or, just use the XBee-868-Pro RF Modules - we use them on our SurVoyeur Survey drones, and easlily achieve 12km range with a halfwave diploe (commercial) whip antenna on the A/C and on ground - we have had up to 17km with occoasional link loss...These module output 300mW typically, and we comply fully with the legal 10% duty cycle in up and downlik data volumes.
Joe,
The NamPilot, Namibia
This is called antenna tracking and has been done for years with FPV gear sending the GPS data on the audio carrier of the video signal. Look at any FPV sight and look for antenna trackers. They are usually use standard size servos in a direct drive setup.
To swing a big yagi around you would need to construct something with more torque and rigidity, like this and this.