Thursday, June 30, 2016

Eachine Blade 185 - vTX Video-TX Antenna Guard (EB185)

According to forum reports, several pilots have had some minor crashes that broke the 5.8ghz FPV video-Transmitter coax antenna connector off the quad ... sometimes, even damaging the main PCB. This is still pretty rough, but here is a proof-of-concept for a skid-plate idea I had.


 
Plastic is about 3.0-3.5mm thick. I find the existing screws are Metric and need to be longer.
There are 4 nylon spacers between plastic guard and quad ("to clear" gold coax soldered-on antenna connector).
 
Thread: M2.5 Thread (0.45mm pitch)
Length: 15mm  is what I use (depth is limited) 
Head: Usually something like Cap-Head Hex-2.0mm
 



Features:
  • Cut clear-plastic (from junk parts box) with Dremel to make more slim-line. Weight with nylon bolt is down to 13.1 grams. Simple and sturdy design of plastic and nylon do not interfere with antenna signals.
  • Added pieces of black foam servo-tape for padding between plastic guard plate and actual gold coax connector/PCB. It's easy to check tightness of antenna coax, and antenna still easy to swap out.
  • Protects connector and also prevents antenna from getting loose and twisting off into props.
  • Flight Test 7-1-2016 : Flies fine.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. No, but hopefully there is enough info here to make your own.

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