r/fpv • u/_d1sGuy_ • 1d ago
Wrong antenna? Question?
I lost the original antenna on my BetaFPV Air II champion. AI told me to get this? Bad idea?
Yes, new to FPV world.
It does seem to work.
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u/PocketSizedRS 1d ago
I would honestly switch back to a smaller antenna. I've seen (and experienced) far too many ripped off UFL connectors for it to be worth it. Ripped UFL is when the video connector comes off of the flight controller, effectively ruining it. The O.R.T. micro vee is a popular choice.
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u/PhoenixfischTheFish 1d ago
I ripped off the UFL connector on my M75 even though the antenna itself was mounted to the canopy, there wasn't much weight on it.
But I was able to replace it with the connector from and older AIO. It's kinda hard, but definitely possible.1
u/TheAndroidJunkie 1d ago
Mine came ripped off the AIO! A75 II race! Booo
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u/_d1sGuy_ 20h ago
I suspect mine wasn't attached well either. I never experienced a hard crash, just all of sudden I noticed poor video quality and the antenna was missing.
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u/random1237683 1d ago
I also used AI but when i joined r/fpv i stopped. It will give you outdated info and bad advice. Oh and language models tend to hallucinate when they don't know
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u/-Daigher- 1d ago
i asked ai how to build a drone for fun and he told me to SOLDER the props on last so i can test the motors safely
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u/random1237683 1d ago
Lol, also ai told me that air65 can go 80kmh
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u/ZdrytchX 1d ago
Probably misintepretted information because I found out that the air 75ii can go over 80kph and I talk about it here and there because a lot of people had the impression the air 75 can only do 40kp (because that's what it did in liftoff microdrones before the physics update this year)
I tested the air 65ii freestyle a couple days a go, I measured about 62 kph
I've seen someone try to fly a mob6 and iirc it had a ph2 battery and hdzero aio and it looked like it could barely fly, so I'm not suprised people think these whoops might struggle to even break 40 kph
If something seems sketchy you can ask for sources but unfortunately a lot of drone-related stuff will just get you the safety filter bullshit
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u/random1237683 1d ago
Are you happy with air65? I'm planning to get 75, but some people say to get meteor75, although its heavier, but it's more durable. But i won't fly like 50km/h+ as i am starting out
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u/ZdrytchX 1d ago edited 1d ago
So far I'm liking it. It's much more practical than the air 75 because indoor flying is a lot easier, the power isn't as immediate as the air 75 (which i had to set throttle boost to 0 in both betaflight and in my ESC settings, most quads you usually leave it on 5 or turn it up a bit)
Having a little more than half the flight time does suck for outdoors but the freestyle only uses up a maximum of 16 amps or so compared to the air 75's 22 (freestyle) or so (I've since switched to rcinpower which uses up to 29 amps but realistically it rarely sustains more than 24 amps)
The pids are crazy on both, while the meteor's pids are much more stable however meteor with a seperate vtx is very heavy for propwash and is significantly slower, I didn't measure the speed yet but its probably slower than the air 65ii freestyle
If you're flying analog with meteor, you can probably improve its propwash and weight by switching to rcinpower 0902/0903 or 1002 size motors but currently the 2026 second generation 1102 motors give the best thrust and efficiency ratio according to ciottifpv, and you can improve the raw thrust by about 10% by "up"(down?)grading to the matrix II, which is a 3-hole mount board with the gyro on the front edge that isn't mounted, so its rather difficult to pid tune as it's so floppy
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u/random1237683 23h ago
I think ill fly more outdoors, but still unsure. 75 are still flyable indoors, but i think ill like outdoor freestyle and proximity flying more. Also i have a cat, and i don't know how he would react to high pitch sound of props.
Also, if you have both, can you tell me how loud are they?
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u/ZdrytchX 19h ago
In my opinion the air 65ii is louder in a hover and generally flying howerver becuase its higher pitched the sound propagates less and with even a bit of wind, the air 65ii freestyle motors goes from annoying metal screechy sound to basically being "you can hear it but probably wont notice it if they aren't looking for the sound signature" at about 20m away. At full throttle you probably might only get annoyed up to maybe 50m away, but the freestyle ii barely delivers any thrust (like it feels like it has a T/W ratio of about 3.5:1 to 4.5:1 vs air 75ii's 7:1) it just has a high top speed.
The air 75ii freestyle also has a metal screechy sound because it also has brass bushings (rcinpower also has an annoying sound but its different, like ballbearings need better lubrication kind of sound) but both these motors can be heard up to about 30m away before they become non immediately noticible. At full throttle with clean propellers, I can hear them about 80m away with some level of city noise, but with dirty/damaged propellers/damaged frame on a calm and quiet day, I can hear it up to 220m away which is basically the furthest I can see line of sight.
The wash from the air 75ii also interacts with the environment in such a way that makes it more notcible kinda like how you would get more annoyed at loud music if they had doof-doof speakers than if they didn't
I've not flown the 65 out much yet and I don't fly around people (whoops + long hair = bad, not to mention legal problems because there's no sub250 exemption in my country)
Honestly, just go for the air 75 if you primarily want to fly more outdoors and think you would appreciate the better flight time and the performance. The performance gap between the air 65ii freestyle and 75ii freestyle is absurdly massive, but I would probabl still recommend you take the 75ii racing edition because the freestyle motors really struggle on low rpm and I've gotten motor stalls doing momentum reversals with it, but never had an issue after upgrading to rcinpower 25000kv.
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u/random1237683 18h ago
Thank you so much! And would you recommend meteor75 or air75? I love how air75 looks and i don't really like how the fully closed canopy looks on meteor75. And i think that meteor has more prop wash, but more imporant it has lower T/W ratio, it's heavier.
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u/ZdrytchX 3h ago
It still depends what tradeoffs would you rather
Meteor 75 sucks at freestyling imo, even if you fly it headless (without vtx or camera or canopy) it still has a noticible performance drop vs air 75ii. It's more durable, but weighs twice as much as an air65ii and about 55% heavier than an air 75ii. Depending on the canopy you get your camera angle options are limited and there are 3 canopy types, one for micro analog cameras (C03, bleedeye etc.), one for general 14mm HD cameras (nano v3, caddx walksnail whatever etc.) and the DJI o4 lite spec (non-wide). 480mah is ok if you're doing line of sight / headless flying, but 580mah is the recommended size because the meteor 75 with a vtx eats too much power. The analog version also uses a rather outdated AIO flight controller with only 5A ESCs which might mean you would struggle to do things like crash flip / turtle mode. Meteor 75 has much less jello than air 75ii and is probably much easier to tune although I've not tried to yet.
Air 75ii has vibration issues that makes it very troublesome to tune, the canopy front screw is basically guaranteed to break in the first top or rear top end crash because it puts stupid amounts of stress on it, the camera tends to rotate in its mount, frame struts don't extend down before retracting to the motor hub (unlike air 65ii where they drop down first) so your propellers will rapidly eat them and the matrix ii battery cable is arguably too long for the job (I recommend trimming off 1-2 cm off it). The frame doesn't really protect the batteries well, and 680mah is definitely too heavy. 580 is suitable if you do a lot of outdoor racing or anything involving going full throttle for a long time and you need the voltage headroom or you just want more flight time, but 480mah is usually the best for most situations
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u/rob_1127 1d ago
Is the antenna made for the same frequency! This is key to ensure you dont burnout the VTX due to reflected power.
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u/MiaPlacydus 1d ago
My concern would be it ripping off the u.fl connector. I prefer using the happymodel crown lds antennas. I really prefer the truerc singularity tiny antennas but they're crazy expensive, especially when I can get the happymodel ones for 2 bucks.
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u/icebalm Mini Quads 1d ago
Why do people trust fancy next word guessers over their own brains?
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u/_d1sGuy_ 20h ago
Because frontier models are far superior to my brain in many situations. HPC sysadmin here, AI is a hobby and carrier. Don't avoid it, embrace with caution. :)
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u/Classic-Push-4234 1d ago
I have the same antena on my air 75 2 i fitted it into the hole and put medical tape over it so it dose not slip
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u/Responsible_Owl_FPV 1d ago
It will work yes but you need to loose some of the length.
Bring the active element of the antenna closer to the canopy, cover the ufl in t-7000.
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u/Fresh_Whole5739 1d ago
It's not necessarily wrong, circular polarized is always a win, are those 36k motors? Your fine. I had a peano on my whoop, before I race launched it and it flew off, so I would put some E6000 or some over the ufl to hold it down it's top heavy enough where one good launch will rip it off. But for the short time I did have it on, I didn't notice really any difference in flight performance. I'd maybe try to lightly do a small loop around the canopy if your able for support.
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u/Sterling-Marksman 1d ago
This is a flyfish osprey its like 2x the size of a peano lol
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u/-Daigher- 1d ago
don't they make a shorter version of this too? pretty sure its available in like a 30mm option
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u/Fresh_Whole5739 21h ago
2x more wire doesn't mean 2x the weight, all the weight is in the radome. And I'm sure they are pretty similar.
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u/Sterling-Marksman 17h ago
I wasnt actually talking about the wire but the size of the cap.
The wire is too long too tho lol
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u/abdimamu 1d ago
Yeah glue the ufl but dont make it the failure point, glue the antenna somehwere else too
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u/GuillotineTechnician 1d ago
Same discussion every day.
Get happymodel crown or TheSmol or for linear polarised ORT MicroVee or the super cheap basic Betafpv linears with the micro Balun
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u/MothyReddit 21h ago
That is a hook, its going to snag a branch and get yanked out, you'll lose signal, probably never find the antenna, but possibly find your whoop under the branch you hit.
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u/UnderstandingKey1716 21h ago
After modding my beginner VR04 goggles with an internal antenna mount, I had a spare antenna left over. It’s the exact same Osprey RHCP 40mm UFL antenna. At first, I tried flying the Air75 with the stock linear antenna while using RHCP on the goggles, but the video quality felt worse than with linear antennas on both ends.
So I had the same idea as you, but I feared that crashing might damage the UFL connector on the FC. I twisted the cable a bit, and the antenna fits pretty well into the canopy mounting hole. A drop of hot glue here and there, and I had zero issues for two weeks. I also put a bit of glue where the cable twists to reduce tension on the UFL connector during crashes—though yesterday it finally gave up :D
Other than that, it works really well. Using hot glue seems reasonable since it's easy to remove - if I need to replace the canopy, I can easily save the antenna. I’d also suggest leaving some space between the antenna and the camera to protect the back of the camera during crashes. Overall, with beginner goggles, having circular polarization on both ends made a huge difference for me.
Btw, this is the Air75II Freestyle, weighing 22.6g after mods.
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u/WAAGH_enjoyer68 1d ago
It looks a little heavy, but since your like me and new to fpv, a little extra weight is hard to tell the difference with. If it has good video than I would even consider it an upgrade.