DJI FPV v2 goggle's antenna recommendation with use with air unit?

aSae · Mar 29, 2021

Hi everyone, I just jumped to digital fpv with dji drone (was mostly flying relaxed freestyle/cruising with analog in the past) and I loved it. I am so amazed on the leap of video quality from usual analog to HD. To feed the addiction more, I am thinking to get an rtf drone with dji air unit (don't have time anymore to build) ie. Nazgul or XL5 . I just have couple of questions in mind:

1. Based on discussion from this forum, I use truerc duality when flying the dji drone, but when switching to drone with air unit, what would be the recommended 5.8ghz antenna replacement to be used with goggle v2? as I understand they change the way each antenna port receive and transmit compare to v1

.
so probably getting a patch type antenna might not give the maximum benefit (for now). Will truerc singularity work? or even the death-ray helical? considering they are treating all antenna ports the same (no specific rx/tx).

2. later, the goggle will be switched back and forth between fpv mode and digital air unit mode depending which unit i will fly (including exchanging the antennas). Will this be a problem ie. overheating the 2.4 transmitter in the goggle due to use of 5.8 on all ports? (I know that i have to rebind everything everytime).

thanks in advance for the advice

b3yond · Mar 30, 2021

Just use the stock antennas, they are okayish.
You will not have a much better reception with TrueRC Singularity. Not worth 80€ or so.

droneguy · Apr 8, 2021

aSae said:
Hi everyone, I just jumped to digital fpv with dji drone (was mostly flying relaxed freestyle/cruising with analog in the past) and I loved it. I am so amazed on the leap of video quality from usual analog to HD. To feed the addiction more, I am thinking to get an rtf drone with dji air unit (don't have time anymore to build) ie. Nazgul or XL5 . I just have couple of questions in mind:

1. Based on discussion from this forum, I use truerc duality when flying the dji drone, but when switching to drone with air unit, what would be the recommended 5.8ghz antenna replacement to be used with goggle v2? as I understand they change the way each antenna port receive and transmit compare to v1

.
so probably getting a patch type antenna might not give the maximum benefit (for now). Will truerc singularity work? or even the death-ray helical? considering they are treating all antenna ports the same (no specific rx/tx).

2. later, the goggle will be switched back and forth between fpv mode and digital air unit mode depending which unit i will fly (including exchanging the antennas). Will this be a problem ie. overheating the 2.4 transmitter in the goggle due to use of 5.8 on all ports? (I know that i have to rebind everything everytime).

thanks in advance for the advice

I have used the TrueRC singularity stubbies since available on the vv1 goggles and the duality stubbies since launch on the v2 goggles and there is definitely a noticeable difference and more so on the v2 goggles especially in high multi-path environments. In my testing, the stock antennas had more frequent and more pronounced drops in bitrate compared to the TrueRC antennas. A lot of people complain about the price, but TrueRC makes some of the best antennas available and their performance speaks for itself.

You don't need to worry about overheating the transmitters as there is still an impedance matched load attached, but it wouldn't be properly tuned to the correct frequency so your wavelength will be off and reception will suffer somewhat but the transmitter is in no danger of overheating and cause damage.

m3sgal · Apr 9, 2021

Do you feel safe tossing the goggles in a backpack with TrueRC Duality antennas still on, or would you have to remove them like the stock ones?

droneguy · Apr 9, 2021

I leave them on. That is one of the huge benefits if these stubbies. Also the SMA connector has a limited number matting cycles before it starts to deteriorate and issues come up. Granted it's probably in the thousands, but keeping the antennas on reduces that wear on the connectors.

DHLA · Jun 15, 2021

Do you think there is any benefit to using 5.8 Patch antenna - like the AX2 or True RC 5.8 patch - combined with two TrueRC Duality Step Antennas? (mounted Top)

Thinking the True RC would help with omni and patch for distance in front of you ... but definitely not an RF engineer and I'm confused about what makes the most sense for longest range DJI VTX

droneguy · Jun 15, 2021

The patch antennas on the market to date are only 5.8Ghz so they wouldn’t be very well suited for the multiband DJI FPV drone. The 2.4GHz band would naturally be used when at longer distances and would suffer with 5.8GHz patch antenna. It isn’t clear how the software uses both the 2.4 or 5.8 bands. I expect the 5.8 is used for video all the time due to the bandwidth requirements and the 2.4 is used to extend the control link beyond the video to prevent failsafes and likely for rebroadcasting missing packets. I have not done any detailed testing yet but I plan on doing some specific tests to determine the impact soon.

thetechnobear · Jun 15, 2021

DHLA said:
Do you think there is any benefit to using 5.8 Patch antenna - like the AX2 or True RC 5.8 patch - combined with two TrueRC Duality Step Antennas? (mounted Top)

Thinking the True RC would help with omni and patch for distance in front of you ... but definitely not an RF engineer and I'm confused about what makes the most sense for longest range DJI VTX

when NOT using the DJI FPV drone then yes use 5.8 patch with 5.8 omni.
there is no need for 2.4ghz support since the air unit does not support it.

if you ARE using the DJI FPV drone, the no, just use 2.4ghz with stock antenna ... you will get better performance, than 5.8 patch antenna.

(note: you can force the DJI FPV into using just 5.8 or 2.4 using 'manual' transmission, its worked fine for me, ever since it was released)

unfortunately, if you are using both, then best option is to follow the above, and switch option.

you could use truerc duality omni as a compromise to avoid switching, but perfomance will be same on dji fpv, and probably only a marginal improvment on air unit... but its less hassle.

hopefullly, we might see a dual band patch antenna in the future - there is one, doesnt look that great, so for now, Im just switching antenna.

see my recent video for demostrations.