Due to the very low price of 2.4Ghz video receivers we have improved our receiving system still further! This new system dose not need to track the aircraft as it is capable of receiving from any direction using any of its of it's 4 aerials. Each aerial is connected to its own receiver and a micro controller constantly checks each receiver and switches to the one with the best signal. As each aerial can receive signals from up to 180deg this means that there is often 2 good signals at any time so this gives us the added bonus of 'diversity'. Diversity is the system used by TV companies to ensure they always have good sound received from their radio microphones. This works well as normally only one aerial will drop the signal at any one time so the system just switches to the other and no one even notices.

With the low power we use to transmit the video from our planes the effective range with this aerial is around 1/4 mile. For longer range flights we use a high gain hand held aerial but this dose require a helper to aim it. When time permits we will test the auto tracking system with the high gain aerial, watch this space !

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