EagleTree Seagull & Poor Range

[Tom in Cincy]

I just bought a Seagull dashboard system(900mhz) and tried it in a test plane.
The range seemed very poor. Very unreliable. Im talking a few hundred feet line-of-sight. I set the power to high in software. 100mw should go at least a mile or more LOS.
Are there any owners/users that could give me their experiences with this system?
Thanks
Tom P.

[djklein21]

I have significant experiance with the system and have been somewhat of a beta tester. It seems that the system workes over a similar band as cell phone towers. we get decent LOS in some areas and nearly no range in poor areas. The system will not work at anything further than RC LLOS range even in perfect conditions. I don't like the wireless ability at all.

However Bill @ eagletree has some of the best customer service I have ever experianced. And all of his sensors work very well, and are a brieze to integrate. For the cost of his system, it is fantastic. It is just not a proffesional quality solution.

[Tom in Cincy]

Thanks for the reply. Real world experience is pretty valuable. The Seagull works outside the cell phone band, however 902 - 928mhz is a junk band and full of competing signals. My Maxstream 100mw system seems to perform much better than the Seagull.
I will have to play around with it some more. I was surprised the thing worked at all mounted on my Futaba's transmitter antenna. I thought it would get desensed/swamped into oblivion.
Thanks again

[billpa]

Hi All,

Tom, sorry you are having a range issue. There are a few things we can do to improve that, I think. We advertise a 1 mile range and you should be getting that.

Here are some thoughts:

1) The biggest thing is to make sure you have the "cell tower patch" we made to the dashboard, starting with dashboards that shipped December 05. This patch fixes 99%+ of range issues we have had reported. Did you order the system directly from us, and after that date? It is relatively easy for us to verify that you have the latest Dash. If the dash has an earphone jack and a 3" (rather than 7") antenna, it should have the latest. If we find you don't have the patch, we can do that for you, no charge.

2) When range checking, it's important to remember the "Fresnel Zone". This rule dictates that there is a "football shaped" clear path between TX and RX. The radius of the football (equidistant between the TX and RX) should be > 30 feet for 1 mile range. For example, if your antennas are 6' off the ground, you lose 5x the range of having them 30' off the ground. Obviously this is not an issue if you are flying rather than ground testing.

3) If we determine that you have the patch from #1 above, it would be HUGELY helpful if you could do a comparison between your MaxStream and our system at the same time, same place, to see if the two are performing differently. The Eagle Tree TX is putting out 200mW on high power, and the receiver has good sensitivity, so I believe we would have better or at least equal range.

4) If we find that the MaxStream is working well in your test area but the Eagle Tree is not, it's time for us to check out the system here.

5) If you find they are both having trouble, we now have the option of a 9dbi Yagi directional antenna for the dashboard, which should increase range 2.5 times+.

6) If we want to get really exotic, we can switch your system to use 1 watt radios.

We coincidently did some extensive range checking here over the last weekend, to compare some new antenna options. We got greater than 1.2 mile range over water with the standard Seagull, with no special antennas. Water is not so good for range, and we were not high enough for the "Fresnel Zone." And, this was done near a subdivision.

We want to get this resolved to your satisfaction. As David points out, we'll keep slugging away until we find a solution or you get sick of us. :-)

Regards,

Bill
Eagle Tree

[rclinks2002]

Bill,
I will start by saying that I love my Eagle Tree System!!!!This is mitch86c@erau.edu. (the one with the GPS troubles a while back) I am wondering about the conversion to use the maxstream modules. I already have 2 radio modems and I am wondering if it would be possible to use those? I assume that the transmitter side is just an Rs232 output. I am wondering if I could send my system in and get a DB9 connector wired into my dashboard so I could use my radio modem. Also would the modification allow one to revert back to the standard ETS transmitter and dashboard? Thanks

Ben Mitchell

[typicalaimster]

I am wondering about the conversion to use the maxstream modules. I already have 2 radio modems and I am wondering if it would be possible to use those?

Oh now that would rock if it was sold as a 'modular' system. I already have Maxstreams so I wouldn't need that half of it.

[billpa]

Ben, thanks for the kind words!

We can do this, but there are a couple of caveats:

1) the modification to the dashboard to use the maxstream is permanent (can't switch back to our link), and requires a dashboard that shipped from us December or later. One possibility, if you want to switch between links, is that we sell you a new dashboard that is "maxstream ready". Then, you can switch between the two links by simply reconfiguring the recorder.

2) The maxstream draws more power than our unit, so we recommend a separate battery on board the plane.

Bill
Eagle Tree

[Tom in Cincy]

If we find you don't have the patch, we can do that for you, no charge.

Thanks Bill.
My Dashboard has the 7" wire whip antenna and no earjack.
I will send the unit in today if I get authorization. I am going to try and call on your tech ph #.
Thanks for the offer.
Tom P.

[billpa]

Hi Tom,

Yes, I suspect the patch will completely resolve the issue for you. Just send the dashboard to our address, with a note inside, and we'll get it updated and back to you immediately!

Bill
Eagle Tree

[Myron]

Hey Bill,

How are you doing on the GPS antennae upgrade? I have the unit working pretty well in one of our birds but it is still a little slow for the GPS to sync up.. We use a Geospacial software to overlay the coords onto our photos but we need to power up and get GPS sync quickly. Also when are you gonna have the electric expander all in one easy to plug in module?

Myron
www.rpflightsystems.com

[Tom in Cincy]

I got my dashboard back from Bill today and made it out to the field this evening. The range problem is solved. It was rock solid and the data displayed on the dashboard was right on. Thanks Bill. It works great. What a difference.....

I have 2 issues to solve. First how do you zero the altimeter. It was always @ -32 feet on the dashboard while on the ground.
Second the RPM on tha dash always shows half what it should. The live indication on the PC was correct..

Tnx
Tom

[djklein21]

What a great thread, I[QUOTE] am going to habe to call up Bil and look into the latest and greatest. I would realy be interested in the upgrade to 1 watt transmitters

[billpa]

Hi All,

Sorry for the delayed reply to the posts.

TOM: Great news - glad that took care of it for you. We've had excellent results with that fix. Re the altimeter, there are a couple of things to do. 1) if you power cycle the dashboard a couple of minutes after turning on the unit, the alt will likely stabilize. 2) if you have versions 3.xx + of recorder firmware indicates that the hardware has our latest compensation circuitry for altitude, which greatly reduces alt drift due to temp change, proximity to your TX, etc. We started shipping this version around June 05, FYI. That's funny on the RPM: just yesterday we fixed this problem in the app. The problem is that if you adjust the "rpm from gearing", you have to bring up the "edit dashboard params" page and click OK for the new gear ratio to be stored in the dashboard. We fixed that to automatically update the dash, but you should have to only do the "edit dash params" + OK thing to correct it now.

David, you have the very latest stuff for 200mW. I think we may have a clue on the range issues you were having before - it looks like there was a bad connection with a power switch? This would give the symptom of poor range, as the unit can take up to 5 seconds to resynch after a power failure, and would never resynch if the power were failing frequently. If it recurs now that this has been eliminated, let me know. We can definitely do the 1 watt upgrade (or the yagi) if there are any more range issues.

Myron: since we last spoke, we've learned that having the ETS TX on high power mode, and right next to the GPS module, can sometimes increase GPS acquire time. Could this be what you are seeing? Our GPS modules now have a connection for an external active antenna, and the module picks the stronger of the internal or external antenna, which we can deploy if the above doesn't fix it. Please email me on your findings on the GPS vs TX thing.

Regards,

Bill
Eagle Tree