So I have Fridays off through the summer and plan on getting in as much FPV as I can on those days. But, it gets very hot and humid here so I am planning on setting up my ground station inside my enclosed RC trailer (may even try with my projector!). Being that I will be FPV'ing with my Skywalker, Quad, Tricopter and Aquacat, I want to make sure I have an almost 360 degree flight area without the trailer blocking the signal. So I would like to mount my antenna tracker/3 way diversity setup on top of the trailer but am concerned about antenna performance/multipathing because of the aluminum roof. I use a patch, rubber duck omni, and a ground plane omni for RX and an inverted V, rubber duck omni, and ground plane omni on the TX's.

Will it be OK mounting these RX antennas on the roof of the trailer? Would it be better to have them as high as possible over the roof? If multipathing would be an issue, what about a type of Faraday RF blocker like screen or wire mesh on the roof?

Thanks for any info.

Patches perform better at ground levels, so when you speak about putting antennas higher, you should choose yagis. However, it's not such a high ground level, so I think it might workout without any problems.

Vaz.

Change over to Circular Polarization. Huge reduction in multipathing and have overall better video quality and performance. IBCrazy's antennas are easy to build and in my opinion there is nothing better. They blow linear polarization out of the water.

just my suggestion!

Thanks for the info. I have built a cloverleaf and its 4 lobe counterpart but have had mixed results. I would like to use these but I use a 3 antenna diversity system and want to be able to use a circular directional but am not sure about what to build for that (the ones I have seen are very sensitive to the exact measurements)

The helical the IBCrazy has a tutorial for is an awesome directional antenna and is very forgiving of build mistakes. I would give that one a try, i love mine

Ahh, I didn't realize the helical was direction. I may give it a shot. Thanks!

Originally Posted by techspy

Will it be OK mounting these RX antennas on the roof of the trailer? Would it be better to have them as high as possible over the roof? If multipathing would be an issue, what about a type of Faraday RF blocker like screen or wire mesh on the roof?

Thanks for any info.

For any antenna, mounting high above the roof is likely best (with the exception of the patch, and that's questionable).

Circular polarization will help the signal dropouts, but it's not a cure-all. With a little directivity (ie helical), you can really knockout just about all problems.

-Alex

Thanks for the info Alex. I will try the helical in place of the patch with my Cloverleaf setup.