Surfing around the Walksnail FB group, i have seen a couple of reports about the infamous Goggles X having weak signals, and some possible work arounds to mitigate this issue. So I tried to investigate further to dig deeper, trying to validate some theories and what's really going on with the Goggles X RF board. Most importantly, how can we get those green signals to our Goggles X.
I documented my tests for the past few days to share it with you. I rearranged the order of test presentations to make it more cohesive. The tests were done mainly indoors, so this is not the optimal environment, but should be sufficient to give you an idea of what's happening. It took me a couple of days trying to figure out factors, and finding the holy grail of green bars. It was not a single run test, I had to repeat some test to verify, also I needed to cool down the vtx after some trials. Feel free to share your thoughts about these.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. The existing routing for the WiFi coax is causing deterioration of signal, maybe because the Wifi Coax will cross the other coax lines with the way it is. Moving the Wifi coax near the PA allows you to route the wifi coax such that it wont cross the other coax lines as well. When you re-route the wifi coax cable, make sure that it will not cross over the other coax cables just to be sure, especially when using stock omnis (and probably other antenna that are NOT BALANCED). Good/balanced antenna are not susceptible to this issue though as explained to me by Hugo (from TrueRC). Unbalanced antenna like the perhaps the stock omnis (and other poorly designed antenna) have the tendency to have their outer coax shields to be part of the antenna, and when the coax touches the wifi coax, basically the antenna touches, dropping SWR. So, move that wifi coax away from the other coax cables if the antenna is not good.
2. The stock heatspreader/big heat sink covers a big part of the RF board. I am not sure exactly how it causes the reduction in signal, but it seems that using slimmer heatsink improves signal too.
3. The stock omnis are not the best thing to have on the goggles X (read number 1). maybe yes, if you consider putting it back into the goggles case. But not when you are concerned with range/ penetration.
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NOTE:
The signal bars are not referring to signal strength, but rather noise floor. It just gives us the idea on which channel is the cleanest.
This video is not narrated, I just demonstrated and included some captions. Those should be more than enough. ;-) Just background music, mute it if you don't want to listen to it :-)
Goggles X FW : 37.42.4
Moonlight and V1 VTX FW: 37.42.4