Just lost my Easystar.

Was flying with a patch antenna on 1.3ghz, i flew out to about 2 km, and t hen i turned back. As soon as i turned back video started getting fuzzy and then went to static. I turned on my DOSD RTH and it flew back a little and video came back so i turned it off. A few seconds later i lost video again and hit my RTH.

This time RTH didnt work and i began spiraling towards the ground which i could see through brief glimpses of very bad video. I tried to regain control manually but i just couldnt see well enough to control.

Lost video at about 200m altitude and 1.5km away. I looked for 2 hours but didnt find anything.

In total lost about $450

I am sorry about your loss, I really hope you find your plane. I still think a GSM GPS tracker is always a must on every single FPV plane.

Really hope you find it!

Sorry, hope you find it don`t give up.
Why RTh didn`t work the second time?.
Any ideas?.

...

Sorry to hear. DOSD RTH is pretty reliable...always has been for me. Any possibility you entered Menu mode vs RTH mode...that would explain no RTH function. Other's have done similar...like launching in Menu mode only to watch the plane quickly come back down after launch.

Sorry to hear that Sounds like you got hammered by multipathing on a weak signal. It's happened to the best of us. Did you by chance record the flight? If so I'm sure we could do an online hunt for it.

If it didn't hit hard enough to lose the battery, then maybe it's still transmitting? Get back to the site of the crash and turn your RX on. If you don't have the GPS coordinates on screen you can do an RSSI hunt for it. Put the patch antenna against your body and spin with a voltmeter reading your RX RSSI pin. Where the RSSI is strongest, start walking. Go about 100 yards and repeat. This should get you fairly close to the airplane.

-Alex

Sad news...
Any gs recordings?

It sucks to lose a plane. I have had that feeling of dread looking for a lost plane that I may never find it, but always have come back home with the same number of planes I left with.

I tell you what - To soften the blow this does, I'll send you a new antenna system that will keep this from happening again - Free. If you PM me tonight, I will have it in the mail tomorrow morning. It's the least I can do.

Attached is a picture of the antennas. Both are left hand circularly polarized and will resist multipathing much better than your patch antenna. That should keep this from happening again.

If you want, I'll also fix that patch antenna for you too. They are actually tuned to resonate at 1145 MHz, not 1280MHz and take a simple modification to put it right at your 1280 MHz frequency. It takes me all of 3 minutes to do the modification once I get the case opened.

-Alex

⇈that is a very kind offer, beginner4life this should help you alot.


n1 Alex.

Originally Posted by VaZ

I am sorry about your loss, I really hope you find your plane. I still think a GSM GPS tracker is always a must on every single FPV plane.

Really hope you find it!

Do those GPS trackers require a subscription to a service?? I'm seeing them pretty cheap on ebay

Originally Posted by Drednox

Do those GPS trackers require a subscription to a service?? I'm seeing them pretty cheap on ebay

Some do, some don't. There are some that are simply pay per message, so you'd
pay nothing at all until you need it, then spend a buck or so to find your plane.

BTW, this type of loss of video is not all that uncommon. The video signal looks great while flying away, and sucks
when you turn straight toward home. Often because Tx antenna is blocked by onboard gear, or is at least
multi-pathing off it, sometimes because the Tx antenna is tilted back a little. The lessons to learn from it, are
1. while flying away to some great distance, stop and make a 360 turn every so often to test both your video and
control signals.
2. Don't assume that you'll be able to fly straight home and plan accordingly. Sometimes you'll turn around discover
the video signal is bad, so just simply turn a few degrees away from pointing straight home, until the video quality
improves, and keep flying that way until you can turn straight home, or just zig zag a little the whole
way back.

ian

Guys like IBCrazy make FPV world a better place to be

I put the video transmitter and antenna out on the wing tip to to help keep the fuselage from blocking the signal when I'm heading home.

I've only really had problems coming home when my video tx was mounted only
3 inches or so behind my flight camera and servos. On the tail of my Skywalker at
same level as flight camera, P&T servos and motor, no problems at all. I think it's
mostly a matter of separation. Put it far enough back, and the angle of
potential blockage is much smaller. I don't like putting anything on my
wings, because they must be removable.

ian

I arealdy lost video signal too in the city, more less 500m away, i found my skywaler after drive car for 90 minutes with my ground station and antenna, searching better signal.
After crash my skywalker continued transmitting video.
Try make it if possible.
Video:

FPV Crash in the city - desastre aéreo em Campos dos Goytacazes - RJ (mayday !) Skywalker (3 min 13 sec)