Antennae Gain

So I learned a thing today.

I need to replace the antenna on my DX8 Gen 1 for only the second time in its very long life. They like to break at the hinge... and it's breaking there again. Change presents opportunity, so I wondered if there was anything to be "gained" from changing the antenna.  Longer is better, right?  Not so much, unless you are flying long range drones.

The stock antenna on RC transmitters is a 2 dbi antenna. This low gain antenna provides more than adequate range for RC flight, and a nice 360-ish degree sphere of signal. If we increase the gain, which requires a longer antenna, we increase the range, but narrow the beam so that the "sphere" becomes a shallower and shallower "donut". This illustrates too that pointing a high gain antenna at the reciever puts the reciever in the larger null zone resulting in a signal loss crash. With a low gain antenna, like ours, this isn't so much an issue, but since a true isotropic (full sphere zone) antenna is not possible, there is still a bit of a null zone pointing out of the end of our low gain antenna too, even though the pic shows a complete sphere, there really is a tiny wedge of null pointing out both ends). So pointing the end of the antenna directly at the reciever actually decreases signal... The best position of the antenna is more or less perpendicular to the horizon, unless the aircraft is directly overhead. Point is, there is a reason the engineers use a 2 dbi antenna for RC, and why a long range drone pilot might want a more directional higher gain antenna.

So, I bought a plain old replacement 2 dbi antenna for my Dx8.

The standard 2 dbi Spektrum Dx7s and Dx8 antenna

SPektrum Dx8 Gen 1 with stock 2 dbi antenna. Really, it's all we need.

Dx6 with a 5 or 9 dbi long range antenna for long range drone flying. The mod is incredibly easy, and there a several vids on YouTube describing it. For pretty much all of us it's un-necessary and will decrease performance, increase risk of signal loss.