Discussions

Recently I have noticed a massive loss of range with one of my Frsky X8R receivers. I did all the usual things to try to resolve the issue, including trying a couple of other X8R's. I even tried one on it's own with no other devices connected, tried different environments, all to no avail. I went online and found that my problem is far from unusual, there appears to be masses of unhappy owners of these things, all having the same fault, so I decided to look a little further. I replaced the antenna's on the first bad receiver, and no improvement, but I did notice that none of my X8R receivers actually utilise diversity in half or full duplex, only one antenna (the same one on all RX's) actually does anything at all. This includes a brand new, out of the packet RX which kind of indicates possibly a bit of fakery is going on. Both antennas do connect to the RF chip, but from there who knows. A simple test is to grab each antenna, and watch your RSSI, one will cause a plummet into failsafe, the other nothing, no effect at all (my 3 did this anyway) Plotting my RSSI levels on a CRO showed a rolling swing of over 20db, in sync with RFH cycle, This combined with the other test of using a 2 watt full duplex rf booster offering an output gain of +14db and an input gain of +12db only yielded a 3db improvement in the rssi, and marginal (20mtr) increase in the now sub 100meter range, pointing more to a frequency problem, not a front end rf problem, despite no diversity. The only conclusion I can draw is that either the transmitter (Taranis) when in D16 (X8R) mode is missing frequency targets or conversely the receiver is, or the entire block is drifting off frequency and subsequently losing the link at one end of the spectrum, recovering again next time around, hence the sawtooth RSSI pattern. Most disconcerting was that after joining the FrSky forum, and laying out my discoveries as a possible cause for the piles of complaints, my posts and tests were quickly removed, and I have now been kicked off the forum by the administrator with no reason given.. no tears there, but in my book, it's quite telling about the company, no correspondence, just get rid of me before I cost them any sales. Anyway, I am also partly eliminating the Taranis from the cause list as my L9R receivers still get massive range, and my D8R-II also get the normal distances, it is only peculiar to the X8R, however, possibly contrary to that, it still may be a coding issue with the RF from the Taranis end, unique to binding that X8R RX, The thing that seems to possibly back that theory is that none of the complainants could get any of their X8R's to perform beyond about 20-100metres, and some with many receivers, others buying themselves a replacement. Doesn't stop there though, one victim tried a second Taranis but still showed no improvement. It almost seems like a virus infects both units. Mine lasted about one year before the first receiver died, and from then on none of my other X8R's would work either. Very strange problem, it's looking like my only solution is to completely ditch all of my $60.00 X8R's and for RC telemetry just use the D8R and for non telemetry the L9R. Big loss not having the S port direct though. I'd be interested to see if anyone else here has the same problem.