Autel Evo Smart Controller Antennas - What's inside?

[BlairAir]

I'd say it's un-related to the antenna's and more likely related on one of the firmware updates, environmental conditions, or something else.

All the antenna's do is radiate the signal and recieve it, they either work or they don't. Still... it's your bird and your risk. Do what you think is safest.

The band switching issue is something that's been around for a bit... 5,8ghz is shorter range than. 2.4ghz. It's there to provide an option if the 2.4ghz band is saturated... but it's not the best band for distance.

I'm an amature so take what I'm saying as such.

- Hal

Hey Hal,

I would tend to agree with that assessment except for one specific symptom occurring during one specific event:

I am neither an expert on radio signals, but I am an IT engineer with over 40 years experience resolving cases on everything from IBM Greek God Server Series to NetApp MetroClusters. When an issue occurs with a specific piece of hardware in the mix that you suspect to be root cause, the very first test is to swap the suspect hardware for a known good component.

Which is what I did here. I have flown the E2P over 600 flights since purchase. The event I described (not reconnecting until the aircraft was power cycled) only happened ONCE. On ONE Flight. It never happened with the stock antenna's. Not once over 600+ flights.

The brief disconnects that happened on V2.1.31 when I first got the V2 E2P/V2 SC (With RC FW 3.1.0.10)
cleared entirely when I flashed V2.1.61, but when they occurred, the controller reconnected in a split second each time.

So without even needing a transient – flashover 'Lightning' test is to determine whether a 5.8GHz backscatter radio communication is possible in the presence of transient - flashover arcs, I can do the math.

Stock antenna's: 600+ flights no issue.
These antennas: ONE Flight, disconnect, unable to reconnect until power cycled. It's not enough data to prove or disprove anything, but I know that I can rely on the stock antenna's, even if they are terrible about staying tight.

I have no idea what component; SW/FW/HW failed to work during the event with these antennas, but they were inexpensive, it was a good experiment, but they had a failure for some reason, and when they did it could not correct itself. Most likely it would never reoccur, but at the small cost invested, they won't get another chance, lol! I wasn't seeing the range improvement described, otherwise I would test them further.

To put it fairly, a component interacted with my system in a way that caused the complete loss of connection, and that connection could not be re-established. The antenna's weren't "bad" and almost certainly weren't defective. As you stated perfectly, they either work or they don't. But they absolutely contributed to a communication failure. So its all semantics after that.

I'm considered the AlienTech Duo 2 - its a powerful amplified rig, but it's bulky, being attached to bigger bulk and I get reasonable range on the stock antenna's, so I'm not in a rush to spend the money.