Bruce, I think I can explain why this thing doesn't work well. I'm an EE PhD student and I have some experience with this stuff. Based on this video alone I already see a lot of problems with the design: - Like others have said, if this really was a circularly polarized antenna, the patches would need to have two feedpoints, or some kind of asymmetry (slots, vias, ...) to turn linear polarization into circular polarization. I don't see any of that, so I assume that this is just a vertically polarized antenna. - You are right, FR4 is a bad choice for this type of antenna, the loss will be very high. - If this antenna works at all, it will have an extremely narrow bandwidth, because the spacing between the patches and the ground plane is way too small. This is made worse by the fact that they used a high-DK material (FR4). Note how your other antenna has a bigger spacing and uses foam (which has a very low DK, almost like air) to avoid this problem. I would guess that the bandwidth of this thing is 50-100MHz, which doesn't even cover the full 5.8GHz band. - Because of the extremely narrow bandwidth the design is extremely sensitive to manufacturing variations (because these shift the center frequency of the antenna away from 5.8GHz). A big problem here is that cheap FR4 has a highly variable dielectric constant (DK), so two antennas from a different batch could have a significantly different center frequency. This design has maybe 1% tolerance for manufacturing variations based on the bandwidth. This would be less of an issue if they used a high-quality RF material, but these are far more expensive, and even then it's pretty optimistic to expect less than 1% manufacturing tolerances. - The lack of phase shift between the left and right patches is not an error, this is actually correct. All patches should have the same phase so the radiation adds up. The required phase shift just depends on the position of the feedpoint. The bottom needs 180 degrees phase shift relative to the top, which explains the weird shape of those microstrips. What is missing here is the left/right feedpoints which would need 90/270 degrees phase shift. - The design seems to rely very heavily on filters/matching structures. This is one of those things that works great in theory but not in practice. The EM simulators used to design these antennas are notoriously inaccurate, it's common to see errors up to 5% even when you're careful. That's 5% for each component. As the number of components in the design goes up, so does the total error. Then there's manufacturing tolerances. In a complex design like this, the real-world performance can be completely different from the simulated performance. This is why a good designer will try to keep everything as simple as possible. - That large metal patch near the coax is very fishy. Same for the big copper soldering pad. At 5.8GHz such a structure is basically a giant capacitor. Presumably they added this to match the antenna to the 50 ohm coax, but if the rest of the circuit had been properly designed then this wouldn't even be necessary. This again increases sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances and simulator inaccuracies. Everything combined, it seems like the designer didn't really know what he was doing and designed this thing through trial-and-error, while blindly trusting the simulator. It would be interesting to connect this thing to a network analyzer to see the return loss (s11) - maybe it actually works fine at a completely different frequency.
"it seems like the designer didn't really know what he was doing" My guess: the designer (cought china cough) had just blatantly been ripped the design from another working patch antenna that had the right pcb and stuff and at the copying didn't got the measurements all within where they should be but just printed the shit anyway and put out for sale.
Bruce. I keep watching your videos and then try to watch the videos of lesser mortals. I am increasingly finding that I quickly return to your channel.
I'm working through engineering physics (we are in circuits, capacitors, resistors, ohms and that sort) and these videos make confusing information learned in class so much more relatable (still hard!) and even fun to see in a relevant hobby I enjoy. I look forward to class out side of class! Thanks for sharing.
Bruce, the co-phasing on these antennas is real critical and anything can go wrong including moisture inside the antenna at this frequency. The upside, real fun band to experiment with antennas! Thanks for the video.
Thanks so much. Love the great explanations on how they work. Something that really bothered me is I knew how helical and clovers worked, but not how patches could be polarised.
I have ANT005B, almost same 15dBi antenna (or so I thought) but with SMA connector on the back not the bottom. I thought that "B" is just for connector option. And it performs great, I got well over 1 mile range on 200mW and FR632, probably 2 miles to make video unusable. I was confused by all these negative reviews. So I opened mine after I watched this video. What a surprise! It is a completely different antenna on inside. While this antenna ANT005 design looks fishy, mine ANT005B looks properly designed for circular polarization. ANT005B has four linear patches that are oriented and fed at 90 deg to each other, you can also see phasing done correctly by different length of transmission lines. Active patches and ground plane are on two separate thin PCBs, separated by air gap, gap size is controlled by plastic standoffs of the housing. This is a shame that aomway puts two completely different antennas on the market that look alike, model number differs just by one letter leading customers to believe that one is a minor modification of another.
There is a possibility that the designer specified the proper materials but either the manager or manufacturer substituted without knowing the repercussions. Happens all the time when engineers already make compromises and management or cost savers don't know why despite all the desire to save the designer stuck with the expensive bits where necessary.
I have a noname 14db linear patch antenna. It has 3 plates sandwitched with spacers. Two of them plates where directors, with some copper over the antenna area. Worked great and did the job.
Bruce could you also open up those cheap ones that worked better then you expected and show us what inside those? I would like to know if its a good design or a fluke that ended up working well but is not consisted with other samples.
You beat me to it with your comment on the PCB material while I was typing about exactly that. I'll bet they did what too many Chinese companies do - they exactly copied the etched PCB pattern from some properly made antenna designed by some company that knew what it was doing and then used the wrong PCB material and/or PCB material thickness, using whatever they could get, had on hand, or was cheapest that day. The element/reflector spacing and the dielectric constant of the material between them is critical, especially at 5.8 GHz even without also trying to get circular polarization.
Hey Bruce, I saw another thing on that antenna. There is no spacing between the element and the copper back other than the fiberglass. Look at the other one and there is a space taken up by the padding behind active element. As you know the spacing between the reflector and driven element is critical at those frequencies. Just my thought as a Old Ham Radio operator...W4DRA
That looks more to me like a linear polarized patch array (with a dodgy feed network) than a circularly polarized patch array. With the microstrips feeding into the center of an edge like that each individual patch would be linear polarized in the same plane. The circular polarized patch antenna designs I've seen use one of 2 techniques: - a square patch quadrature fed on 2 edges, - or a rectangle fed on the diagonal, the difference between length and width of the rectangle producing a phase difference between the 2 directions.
With my limited knowledge of patch antennas and some discussion with fellow ham operators, it seems evident from the PCB layout that the Aomway is linearly polarized. The placement of the feed point on the patch element dictates the polarization and the delay line is just to bring the element to phase because it's fed from the opposite side.
It dawned to me that if you test this antenna with a circular polarized tx it would very likely seem weaker in comparison to a real cp rx antenna, since great part of the power (~half-ish) is lost due to polarization attenuation.
Bruce- I found the same relatively poor performance but by cleanly cutting the trace to the bottom 2 pads and orienting it sideways (out the side of my Dominator V2 with no adapters), it works pretty well with a reasonably wide but relatively short beam (or tall and narrow beam if in it's stock upright orientation).
I just noticed this aomway patch looks 99% identical to the turbowing Cyclopes 8dbi antenna that I have. In the description of my Cyclopes antenna, it lists it as being Omni directional and linear polarized. This makes a lot more sense then it being a circular polarized antenna like the aomway listing.
I'm using the aomway patch and the first thing was to ditch the plastic shell. Not sure what it's made of but it could have a high dielectric constant which contributes to the attenuation of the Rx signal. That and they're heavy.
The varying width traces are about impedance matching, not polarisation. The very very fine traces will act like a high-value inductor - effectively disconnecting the patch from the feed. Correspondingly, what you are looking at there is somewhat of a huckery dipole, and thats about all.
Great explanation :) By the way, Voodoo is not only and exclusively related to black magic, Voodoo is also and mostly a pretty efficient old knowledge of medicinal and hallucinogen plants...
I've noticed a LOT of people have had very bad results with this one Aomway antenna... RCShim and many others have methodically shown Aomway makes some superior antennas and in various shootouts, seem to come in near the top of the results as best, although priced near the least..... soooo.... maybe they tried out a new engineer, or one of them just copied some of another successful brands design and through using cheaper materials maybe even got a working copy, but add manufacturing tolerances and a lot of other tolerances many people have described in the comments, maybe the production model was technically only a distant cousin to the actual working prototype. For whatever reason, it shows that the Chinese are good at copying (as evidenced by the various very good products they do produce)....but also reinforces that even good companies have a bad day every now and then.... Thats why I like to see reviews on every item I buy, and like to see if at least the majority likes it as well...or doesn't. Bruce, your tha' man!.... keep up those great reviews, Somebody has to kick their butts if they flub one.
Hi , great stuff . hope you still reply to this vid as you look like the man to ask . i have a mavic pro 1 drone and i bought a itelite dbs nanosync patch antenna range extender for it , the drone uses two antennas i think the right antenna is a diversity antenna either that or something else , either way it dont make any difference when unplugged , the patch antenna i bought plugs into the left and right port of the remote control , one patch for left antenna port and the other patch for the right . as the the right antenna is not being used can i connect both patches both in series or parallel with coax and then put them both into left port of the remote control for more gain .with the right antenna just put a simple 2.4 ghz whip in there just in case it is a diversity receiver . . looking forward to your reply . regards Tony
Good video Bruce I I also have one of these and found not great results with it. I also have a helical from this company and found it works very well. Perhaps try another style of patch to compare? I have one from Dalrc and it seems to work a bit better.
Bruce, Wouldn't the helical antenna need to be steered to be pointing to the transmitter? What ever happened to the HK Turbine? Hope the weekend down there won't be as windy as seen on Xjet. :-)
Bruce as always great job, if possible could you review 3d fpv. I could see advantages in possibly not needing such a fish eye lens due to the stereo video or I might be wrong . The 3d fpv would it need 2 vtx or not I don't know....thank you
Wish you had a cross hair & a pepper box to try from ibcrazy! Need some one on his forum to ask if he cooed send you a few for real life testing in a true shoot out with an unbiased out look toward the products used.
I think it would be better to pop the antenna on a spectrum analyser to see its true performance and characteristics. Plus you will see where it best performs within the 5.8GHz band 👍 Love your videos though Bruce, keep up the good work.
+Martin Crosbie As I said in my antenna shootout... test gear for these frequencies is pretty spendy. What's needed to really test stuff like this out is a vector network analyzer but for something that'll do 5.8GHz you're talking US$15K+ for such a bit of kit so it'll be a little while before I can afford one of those ;-)
+xjet yes, totally agree Bruce. Well soon as I get my Aomway RCHPs I'll take them into work and ask nicely to test on the spectrum analyser and I'll share the results 👍
+xjet Bruce you should get one of the Immersion RC power meters. I am certain the absolute readings are ball park at best but it is useful for comparative testing. With the supplied attenuator it claims to read from -50dBm to 0 dBm on frequencies relevant to RCers. I have one and while it is not something you will typically use every day I think it is a worthwhile investment. I'd be interested to see how it matches up to your spec analyser on 2.4 and lower.
Looks like a mistake in chip-die production. There is no exposure for the ariel on the PCB. I'm not sure schooled in electronics, so would not know for sure if that is a factor? Thanks for showing us though. Safe Journeys
+FreeClient01 - there is no "chip" or "die". It is a passive antenna with no active components. The copper of the antenna traces do not need to be exposed. Just like most other antennas they can be protected from the elements with plastic or rubber for example.
Hi Bruce, interesting Vid again. I have a Phantom 3 standard and want to increase my RC range in the 5.8 Ghz. Can I do that by replacing the standard antenna for a helical or patch and use it as a transmitter antenna?
Could it have the opposite (clockwise / anticlockwise) polarization to the transmitter antenna you used for the test? Maybe you should test it with a non-polarized (rubber duck) transmitter antenna first?
The 10"x10" panel antenna I got at FPVmodel had 16-20 element squares inside and was only 14db. Works great with my cloverleafs too. Those 4 element squares type are disappointing.
+pling2 I wouldn't say to "all", but it's a good idea to be reminded every now and then. :) I wouldn't like Bruce to go too commercialized but if it helps him to get $5 or $10 from us every month to get quality videos, I think people would chip in, as I did. Thanks
Hi Bruce. Great vlogs buddy. You're the best technical guy out there. Help me understand this... In more than three tests I've seen the Aomay circular polarised antenna out performs most. But it's gain is 3 dbi but beats the 5dbi of other brands. How does that work? Surely the larger the foam the better the performance.. No? Can you clarify because my friend and I are scratching our heads about that one. Yours, Peter
Bruce! I bough one of those some time ago! And as you found out it is crap! It's laying on my scrap stuff, do you think there's a way to fix it and give it some service life?
For me it work and i can Fly arround me with this Antenna. But i don't know whats wrong with other Antennas. I hope Aomway will change their Antenna to work for everyone :)
would the band influence the reception? i mean 5.8ghz isn't exactly 5800. isn't it more like in the range of 5700 to 5900 mhz? perhaps this patch antenna is tuned to a specific band?
Oh and please recommend a helical that you like and where to buy? Another quick question (sorry to rack your brains) TBS sell an omni directional circular polarised and recommend it for a receiver. Is that better be aside it doesn't get reversed polarised reflections cancelling out the signal? And if that's true is that only relevant if you fly indoors where you get reflections? I only fly in fields. So if that is correct it wouldn't be any better? Is that right buddy? Thanks P.
Hi, Bruce! I took apart my Aomway patch antenna & the four patches were exposed copper not cover over like yours. I am not sure if it makes a difference ?
Best two antennas for diversity reciever. My humble opinion are ibcrazy 3 turn helical paired with his Peoperbox are best on a diversity reciever. On transmitter I use lhcp air blades. They are expensive But make a rock solid 5.8 video connection.
Bruce, small question. If you would cut the feeds of the patches and would connect them by 4 wires of the same lenght. Would that improve it's performance? Or just throw it in the bin and buy a helical.
I have same antenna, same thing happens as with yours, so it is definitely not faulty but design is bad. I tested it at 5 km range with fatshark 250mw TX, with Immersion rc spironet antenna. At receiver side was mentioned Immersion rc antenna, and this one. Spironet worked rather well, this one barely showed any picture, with any orientation was same.
If you grind away the foil connection from the two phase patches and make this antenna into a straight patch type, retest it, then you will have some evidence to relate to the material of the board. Crap to start--no loss in the end.
I have been using the Immersion patch (seemingly a straight ripoff of another patch by an industrial manufacturer) and that uses straight FR4 substrate. No solder mask on the elements though, but still just FR4.
Clearly the phasing and matching network has had some thought put into it, so it is either an inferior copy of another product and/or the actual physical details of the antenna have deviated from the original design. At these frequencies dimensional accuracy needs to be sub tenths of a mm and with the correct dielectric material. With modern PCB manufacture accuracy should not be a problem if done properly. It's a pity because Aomway have a decent reputation with their VTX's.
There is also this 14dbi patch which has a similar design but the patch layout and phasing network is slightly different. It's linearly polarised but it seems to work kinda fairly ok from my observations. www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__64664__5_8GHz_14dBi_Directional_Patch_Antenna_SMA_.html
what about a, say 3element quad on your receiver grown station, I'm not flying around me more always in front, one side asks -- and the other | , just a thought, graet video 73's kf4gxm
Bruce, once again another great video, thanks! I did however want to comment on the Aomway patch antennas, a buddy of mine has the same from your video and had a similar experience. I bought what I assume was the same antenna but with the SMA connector coming out the back instead of on a flexible lead. My experience with that antenna has been amazing, I have got signal past 3 miles!!! it nearly kept up with a 7 turn helical and outperformed a 5 turn. I wonder if there is a design flaw in the version that you picked up. Here is a link to the antenna i purchased, and it's still working like a champ... www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__76888__Aomway_5_8GHz_CP_Patch_antenna_14Ddbi_RHCP_Rear_Mount_SMA_.html
Bad design! The feeds are all vertical. For circular polarization, 2 patches should be fed horizontally, 2 vertically, and the phase delta should be 90 degrees between each, alternating V, H, V, H.
Not talking about the Aomway, but the one on the left (black case). I wouldn't trust it because it wasn't designed by an engineer. Engineers know it's "dB" with a capital B and not "db". Also, dB is not enough, antenna gain is in dBi or dBd: dB over isotropic (i) or dipole (d). Without the i/d, it just doesn't mean anything. If they can't get the label right, how can they do a proper electrical design?
Antenna is a very loose description of this piece of crap, I bought one and the under performance is remarkable. If your ever tempted to buy one please give your money to charity or better still Bruce's patreon page and not to Aomway. It's a shame Hobby King obviously don't test the products they sell.
Can you speak a little bit slower`, please for foreign abo's of your really good channel? And an instruction how to build a real good multi-patch antenne would be nice!
I performed a test with my RF explorer and indeed, this antenna is worse than an omni: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2624447 So I confirm Bruce's verdict!
Bruce, you are a trove of knowledge! Thanks for explaining this!
Bruce I can listen to you talk all day long.. Just like mvh808 said you are a trove of knowledge.. another great info video.. 10/10
Bruce, I think I can explain why this thing doesn't work well. I'm an EE PhD student and I have some experience with this stuff. Based on this video alone I already see a lot of problems with the design:
- Like others have said, if this really was a circularly polarized antenna, the patches would need to have two feedpoints, or some kind of asymmetry (slots, vias, ...) to turn linear polarization into circular polarization. I don't see any of that, so I assume that this is just a vertically polarized antenna.
- You are right, FR4 is a bad choice for this type of antenna, the loss will be very high.
- If this antenna works at all, it will have an extremely narrow bandwidth, because the spacing between the patches and the ground plane is way too small. This is made worse by the fact that they used a high-DK material (FR4). Note how your other antenna has a bigger spacing and uses foam (which has a very low DK, almost like air) to avoid this problem. I would guess that the bandwidth of this thing is 50-100MHz, which doesn't even cover the full 5.8GHz band.
- Because of the extremely narrow bandwidth the design is extremely sensitive to manufacturing variations (because these shift the center frequency of the antenna away from 5.8GHz). A big problem here is that cheap FR4 has a highly variable dielectric constant (DK), so two antennas from a different batch could have a significantly different center frequency. This design has maybe 1% tolerance for manufacturing variations based on the bandwidth. This would be less of an issue if they used a high-quality RF material, but these are far more expensive, and even then it's pretty optimistic to expect less than 1% manufacturing tolerances.
- The lack of phase shift between the left and right patches is not an error, this is actually correct. All patches should have the same phase so the radiation adds up. The required phase shift just depends on the position of the feedpoint. The bottom needs 180 degrees phase shift relative to the top, which explains the weird shape of those microstrips. What is missing here is the left/right feedpoints which would need 90/270 degrees phase shift.
- The design seems to rely very heavily on filters/matching structures. This is one of those things that works great in theory but not in practice. The EM simulators used to design these antennas are notoriously inaccurate, it's common to see errors up to 5% even when you're careful. That's 5% for each component. As the number of components in the design goes up, so does the total error. Then there's manufacturing tolerances. In a complex design like this, the real-world performance can be completely different from the simulated performance. This is why a good designer will try to keep everything as simple as possible.
- That large metal patch near the coax is very fishy. Same for the big copper soldering pad. At 5.8GHz such a structure is basically a giant capacitor. Presumably they added this to match the antenna to the 50 ohm coax, but if the rest of the circuit had been properly designed then this wouldn't even be necessary. This again increases sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances and simulator inaccuracies.
Everything combined, it seems like the designer didn't really know what he was doing and designed this thing through trial-and-error, while blindly trusting the simulator. It would be interesting to connect this thing to a network analyzer to see the return loss (s11) - maybe it actually works fine at a completely different frequency.
"it seems like the designer didn't really know what he was doing"
My guess: the designer (cought china cough) had just blatantly been ripped the design from another working patch antenna that had the right pcb and stuff and at the copying didn't got the measurements all within where they should be but just printed the shit anyway and put out for sale.
Bruce. I keep watching your videos and then try to watch the videos of lesser mortals. I am increasingly finding that I quickly return to your channel.
I'm working through engineering physics (we are in circuits, capacitors, resistors, ohms and that sort) and these videos make confusing information learned in class so much more relatable (still hard!) and even fun to see in a relevant hobby I enjoy. I look forward to class out side of class! Thanks for sharing.
Bruce, the co-phasing on these antennas is real critical and anything can go wrong including moisture inside the antenna at this
frequency. The upside, real fun band to experiment with antennas! Thanks for the video.
Thanks so much. Love the great explanations on how they work. Something that really bothered me is I knew how helical and clovers worked, but not how patches could be polarised.
You said the magic phrase! "PC board", instead of "PCB board"!
Respect++;
Fair enough. Good to see you looked in to why it performed so badly and didnt just leave us hanging :)
much better than just saying its not working, like explaining how it should work.. brilliant video!! thank you very much...
I have ANT005B, almost same 15dBi antenna (or so I thought) but with SMA connector on the back not the bottom. I thought that "B" is just for connector option. And it performs great, I got well over 1 mile range on 200mW and FR632, probably 2 miles to make video unusable. I was confused by all these negative reviews. So I opened mine after I watched this video. What a surprise! It is a completely different antenna on inside.
While this antenna ANT005 design looks fishy, mine ANT005B looks properly designed for circular polarization. ANT005B has four linear patches that are oriented and fed at 90 deg to each other, you can also see phasing done correctly by different length of transmission lines. Active patches and ground plane are on two separate thin PCBs, separated by air gap, gap size is controlled by plastic standoffs of the housing.
This is a shame that aomway puts two completely different antennas on the market that look alike, model number differs just by one letter leading customers to believe that one is a minor modification of another.
There is a possibility that the designer specified the proper materials but either the manager or manufacturer substituted without knowing the repercussions. Happens all the time when engineers already make compromises and management or cost savers don't know why despite all the desire to save the designer stuck with the expensive bits where necessary.
I have a noname 14db linear patch antenna. It has 3 plates sandwitched with spacers. Two of them plates where directors, with some copper over the antenna area. Worked great and did the job.
Bruce could you also open up those cheap ones that worked better then you expected and show us what inside those?
I would like to know if its a good design or a fluke that ended up working well but is not consisted with other samples.
You beat me to it with your comment on the PCB material while I was typing about exactly that. I'll bet they did what too many Chinese companies do - they exactly copied the etched PCB pattern from some properly made antenna designed by some company that knew what it was doing and then used the wrong PCB material and/or PCB material thickness, using whatever they could get, had on hand, or was cheapest that day. The element/reflector spacing and the dielectric constant of the material between them is critical, especially at 5.8 GHz even without also trying to get circular polarization.
Hey Bruce,
I saw another thing on that antenna. There is no spacing between the element and the copper back other than the fiberglass. Look at the other one and there is a space taken up by the padding behind active element. As you know the spacing between the reflector and driven element is critical at those frequencies. Just my thought as a Old Ham Radio operator...W4DRA
Such a great effort by Bruce. At this point there is only 1 dislike who needs to EAD
I almost ordered one of these, thanks for keeping me from wasting my money Bruce :)
That looks more to me like a linear polarized patch array (with a dodgy feed network) than a circularly polarized patch array. With the microstrips feeding into the center of an edge like that each individual patch would be linear polarized in the same plane.
The circular polarized patch antenna designs I've seen use one of 2 techniques:
- a square patch quadrature fed on 2 edges,
- or a rectangle fed on the diagonal, the difference between length and width of the rectangle producing a phase difference between the 2 directions.
Another great video uncovering facts
With my limited knowledge of patch antennas and some discussion with fellow ham operators, it seems evident from the PCB layout that the Aomway is linearly polarized. The placement of the feed point on the patch element dictates the polarization and the delay line is just to bring the element to phase because it's fed from the opposite side.
It dawned to me that if you test this antenna with a circular polarized tx it would very likely seem weaker in comparison to a real cp rx antenna, since great part of the power (~half-ish) is lost due to polarization attenuation.
Bruce- I found the same relatively poor performance but by cleanly cutting the trace to the bottom 2 pads and orienting it sideways (out the side of my Dominator V2 with no adapters), it works pretty well with a reasonably wide but relatively short beam (or tall and narrow beam if in it's stock upright orientation).
I just noticed this aomway patch looks 99% identical to the turbowing Cyclopes 8dbi antenna that I have. In the description of my Cyclopes antenna, it lists it as being Omni directional and linear polarized. This makes a lot more sense then it being a circular polarized antenna like the aomway listing.
I'm using the aomway patch and the first thing was to ditch the plastic shell. Not sure what it's made of but it could have a high dielectric constant which contributes to the attenuation of the Rx signal. That and they're heavy.
The varying width traces are about impedance matching, not polarisation. The very very fine traces will act like a high-value inductor - effectively disconnecting the patch from the feed. Correspondingly, what you are looking at there is somewhat of a huckery dipole, and thats about all.
Propagation is the name used for radio antenna study and design.
Great explanation :)
By the way, Voodoo is not only and exclusively related to black magic, Voodoo is also and mostly a pretty efficient old knowledge of medicinal and hallucinogen plants...
Just something as simple as saying a circular polarised wave is like a corkscrew... I never knew that, always wondered what the difference was !
I've noticed a LOT of people have had very bad results with this one Aomway antenna... RCShim and many others have methodically shown Aomway makes some superior antennas and in various shootouts, seem to come in near the top of the results as best, although priced near the least..... soooo.... maybe they tried out a new engineer, or one of them just copied some of another successful brands design and through using cheaper materials maybe even got a working copy, but add manufacturing tolerances and a lot of other tolerances many people have described in the comments, maybe the production model was technically only a distant cousin to the actual working prototype. For whatever reason, it shows that the Chinese are good at copying (as evidenced by the various very good products they do produce)....but also reinforces that even good companies have a bad day every now and then....
Thats why I like to see reviews on every item I buy, and like to see if at least the majority likes it as well...or doesn't.
Bruce, your tha' man!.... keep up those great reviews, Somebody has to kick their butts if they flub one.
Hi , great stuff . hope you still reply to this vid as you look like the man to ask . i have a mavic pro 1 drone and i bought a itelite dbs nanosync patch antenna range extender for it , the drone uses two antennas i think the right antenna is a diversity antenna either that or something else , either way it dont make any difference when unplugged , the patch antenna i bought plugs into the left and right port of the remote control , one patch for left antenna port and the other patch for the right . as the the right antenna is not being used can i connect both patches both in series or parallel with coax and then put them both into left port of the remote control for more gain .with the right antenna just put a simple 2.4 ghz whip in there just in case it is a diversity receiver . . looking forward to your reply . regards Tony
Another big problem with the Aomway is the space between the driven element and the reflector is way to small.
Good video Bruce I
I also have one of these and found not great results with it. I also have a helical from this company and found it works very well. Perhaps try another style of patch to compare? I have one from Dalrc and it seems to work a bit better.
Bruce,
Wouldn't the helical antenna need to be steered to be pointing to the transmitter?
What ever happened to the HK Turbine? Hope the weekend down there won't be as windy as seen on Xjet. :-)
Bruce as always great job, if possible could you review 3d fpv. I could see advantages in possibly not needing such a fish eye lens due to the stereo video or I might be wrong . The 3d fpv would it need 2 vtx or not I don't know....thank you
Wish you had a cross hair & a pepper box to try from ibcrazy! Need some one on his forum to ask if he cooed send you a few for real life testing in a true shoot out with an unbiased out look toward the products used.
I would like to see the patch antenna pcb that is made out of teflon/teflon reinforced glassfiber and don't cost an arm and a leg.
I think it would be better to pop the antenna on a spectrum analyser to see its true performance and characteristics. Plus you will see where it best performs within the 5.8GHz band 👍
Love your videos though Bruce, keep up the good work.
+Martin Crosbie As I said in my antenna shootout... test gear for these frequencies is pretty spendy. What's needed to really test stuff like this out is a vector network analyzer but for something that'll do 5.8GHz you're talking US$15K+ for such a bit of kit so it'll be a little while before I can afford one of those ;-)
+xjet yes, totally agree Bruce. Well soon as I get my Aomway RCHPs I'll take them into work and ask nicely to test on the spectrum analyser and I'll share the results 👍
+xjet Bruce you should get one of the Immersion RC power meters. I am certain the absolute readings are ball park at best but it is useful for comparative testing. With the supplied attenuator it claims to read from -50dBm to 0 dBm on frequencies relevant to RCers. I have one and while it is not something you will typically use every day I think it is a worthwhile investment. I'd be interested to see how it matches up to your spec analyser on 2.4 and lower.
Looks like a mistake in chip-die production. There is no exposure for the ariel on the PCB. I'm not sure schooled in electronics, so would not know for sure if that is a factor? Thanks for showing us though. Safe Journeys
+FreeClient01 - there is no "chip" or "die". It is a passive antenna with no active components. The copper of the antenna traces do not need to be exposed. Just like most other antennas they can be protected from the elements with plastic or rubber for example.
Excellent video and very educational. You ought to ask IBCrazy on his RCGroup thread to see his take on it. Alex is pretty good with that black magic!
Hi Bruce, interesting Vid again. I have a Phantom 3 standard and want to increase my RC range in the 5.8 Ghz. Can I do that by replacing the standard antenna for a helical or patch and use it as a transmitter antenna?
Thanks, you saved me from making a bad purchase!
Excellent thanks Bruce. I tried one of these too and it didn't work at all.
Same for me. Lost FPV signal after about 8 meters. 8!!!!!!!
Could it have the opposite (clockwise / anticlockwise) polarization to the transmitter antenna you used for the test? Maybe you should test it with a non-polarized (rubber duck) transmitter antenna first?
+ceptimus It's sold as an RHCP antenna and the transmitter had an RHCP antenna on it.
The 10"x10" panel antenna I got at FPVmodel had 16-20 element squares inside and was only 14db. Works great with my cloverleafs too. Those 4 element squares type are disappointing.
Bruce, why don't you add your patreon details to all of you videos?
+pling2 I wouldn't say to "all", but it's a good idea to be reminded every now and then. :) I wouldn't like Bruce to go too commercialized but if it helps him to get $5 or $10 from us every month to get quality videos, I think people would chip in, as I did. Thanks
Hi Bruce. Great vlogs buddy. You're the best technical guy out there. Help me understand this...
In more than three tests I've seen the Aomay circular polarised antenna out performs most. But it's gain is 3 dbi but beats the 5dbi of other brands. How does that work? Surely the larger the foam the better the performance.. No? Can you clarify because my friend and I are scratching our heads about that one.
Yours,
Peter
Bruce! I bough one of those some time ago! And as you found out it is crap! It's laying on my scrap stuff, do you think there's a way to fix it and give it some service life?
suggestions to replace the tiny pcb antenna on my mavic mini please?
For me it work and i can Fly arround me with this Antenna. But i don't know whats wrong with other Antennas. I hope Aomway will change their Antenna to work for everyone :)
hey man can you help me with my build my transmitter is have problem on the open pilot wizard setup. all help appreciated
would the band influence the reception? i mean 5.8ghz isn't exactly 5800. isn't it more like in the range of 5700 to 5900 mhz?
perhaps this patch antenna is tuned to a specific band?
Oh and please recommend a helical that you like and where to buy?
Another quick question (sorry to rack your brains) TBS sell an omni directional circular polarised and recommend it for a receiver. Is that better be aside it doesn't get reversed polarised reflections cancelling out the signal? And if that's true is that only relevant if you fly indoors where you get reflections? I only fly in fields. So if that is correct it wouldn't be any better? Is that right buddy?
Thanks
P.
Hi, Bruce! I took apart my Aomway patch antenna & the four patches were exposed copper not cover over like yours. I am not sure if it makes a difference ?
Best two antennas for diversity reciever. My humble opinion are ibcrazy 3 turn helical paired with his Peoperbox are best on a diversity reciever. On transmitter I use lhcp air blades. They are expensive But make a rock solid 5.8 video connection.
Bruce, small question. If you would cut the feeds of the patches and would connect them by 4 wires of the same lenght. Would that improve it's performance? Or just throw it in the bin and buy a helical.
I'm curious what kind of math is behind the patch-antennas
please tell me how to make one of these for 2.4ghz, and are they any better that a biquad or double biquad?
I have same antenna, same thing happens as with yours, so it is definitely not faulty but design is bad. I tested it at 5 km range with fatshark 250mw TX, with Immersion rc spironet antenna.
At receiver side was mentioned Immersion rc antenna, and this one. Spironet worked rather well, this one barely showed any picture, with any orientation was same.
Good follow-up. Tks.
Great video Bruce. What two antennas would you use on a diversity set up at 5.8ghz?
i've done hours of research into antennas, i know slightly less now than i did before i started,
Why doesnt anyone make a fractal fpv antenna?
If you grind away the foil connection from the two phase patches and make this antenna into a straight patch type, retest it, then you will have some evidence to relate to the material of the board. Crap to start--no loss in the end.
Hey, is it possible for me to send a quadcopter frame to you to review?
You should try the Tomahawk-Antenna... i got out 4km with 5.8 600mw perfect cleare picture!
Greatings
.
on 5.8?
yes
Patches... Haha good for weening off from that old fpv addiction!
Bruce, have you ever looked into 5.8 GHz fractal antennas?
I have been using the Immersion patch (seemingly a straight ripoff of another patch by an industrial manufacturer) and that uses straight FR4 substrate. No solder mask on the elements though, but still just FR4.
Clearly the phasing and matching network has had some thought put into it, so it is either an inferior copy of another product and/or the actual physical details of the antenna have deviated from the original design. At these frequencies dimensional accuracy needs to be sub tenths of a mm and with the correct dielectric material. With modern PCB manufacture accuracy should not be a problem if done properly. It's a pity because Aomway have a decent reputation with their VTX's.
What are your thoughts about Helical vs. Crosshair?
There is also this 14dbi patch which has a similar design but the patch layout and phasing network is slightly different. It's linearly polarised but it seems to work kinda fairly ok from my observations. www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__64664__5_8GHz_14dBi_Directional_Patch_Antenna_SMA_.html
Have any recommended patch antennas
Which helical antenna would you recommend? Thanks
what about a, say 3element quad on your receiver grown station, I'm not flying around me more always in front, one side asks -- and the other | , just a thought, graet video 73's kf4gxm
Bruce, once again another great video, thanks! I did however want to comment on the Aomway patch antennas, a buddy of mine has the same from your video and had a similar experience. I bought what I assume was the same antenna but with the SMA connector coming out the back instead of on a flexible lead. My experience with that antenna has been amazing, I have got signal past 3 miles!!! it nearly kept up with a 7 turn helical and outperformed a 5 turn. I wonder if there is a design flaw in the version that you picked up. Here is a link to the antenna i purchased, and it's still working like a champ... www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__76888__Aomway_5_8GHz_CP_Patch_antenna_14Ddbi_RHCP_Rear_Mount_SMA_.html
It probably a poorly implemented copy of a good antenna.
Bad design! The feeds are all vertical. For circular polarization, 2 patches should be fed horizontally, 2 vertically, and the phase delta should be 90 degrees between each, alternating V, H, V, H.
#straya!! #Goodday
"worse than a wet piece of string" ☺️🙃☺️🤣
Not talking about the Aomway, but the one on the left (black case). I wouldn't trust it because it wasn't designed by an engineer. Engineers know it's "dB" with a capital B and not "db". Also, dB is not enough, antenna gain is in dBi or dBd: dB over isotropic (i) or dipole (d). Without the i/d, it just doesn't mean anything. If they can't get the label right, how can they do a proper electrical design?
Antenna is a very loose description of this piece of crap, I bought one and the under performance is remarkable. If your ever tempted to buy one please give your money to charity or better still Bruce's patreon page and not to Aomway. It's a shame Hobby King obviously don't test the products they sell.
Can you speak a little bit slower`, please for foreign abo's of your really good channel? And an instruction how to build a real good multi-patch antenne would be nice!
I performed a test with my RF explorer and indeed, this antenna is worse than an omni: www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2624447
So I confirm Bruce's verdict!
That antenna is indeed a piece of c..., mine went in the bin, as a bare sma pin works better. It is fake, and not worth buying.
That's funny, my AOMWAY is a champ......
yeh they are crap :S
I only get around 20m ... meanwhile my other gets 5km
Get a helical antenna :)
AOMWAY Very Bad Product