10-Apr-2017, 05:49 PM
As we all know, if your quad comes down, it can often end up nowhere near the place you think it came down. Typically, you realise that the crash is unavoidable and you rip off your goggles to try and see where your quad will land.
Of course, by the time you rip your goggles off, the crash has already happened and your quad is nowhere to be seen. Long grass, bushes and trees all conspire to make finding your quad a worrying exercise!
If you have a receiver with RSSI telemetry back to your radio, you are in a much better position than those without as the RSSI level will help you home in on where your beloved flying machine is hiding. If you don't, or your battery gets ejected in the crash, the search gets much more difficult.
Having lost one quad myself (a very nice Armattan MRP130), I vowed that I wouldn't lose another one! My solution? One of these:
![[Image: loc8_zpsvei3ektp.jpg]](http://i1156.photobucket.com/albums/p579/grizewald/Mobile%20Uploads/2017-04/loc8_zpsvei3ektp.jpg)
I've added some velcro underneath the little disc and use that to attach it to another small square of velcro on the craft. The loop of fishing line ensures that the tracking disc stays with the quad even if the crash is violent enough to rip it off the velcro. Both the disc and the credit card sized tracker run off CR2032 batteries which last around six months in my experience.
Up to four tags can be bound to one tracker - one for each of the four buttons - which saves you from having to keep swapping a single tag from one craft to the next.
When the inevitable happens and you have to find your craft, using the tracker is simplicity itself. You wake up the tracker and press the button that corresponds to the tag you want to find while pointing the tracker in the assumed general direction of the tag. If the tracker manages to activate the tag, a number of the LEDs on the tracker will light up and it will being beeping. If it doesn't activate the tag, walk in the general direction and try again. It normally works first time. Once the LEDs light up, hold the tracker horizontally in your hand and turn from left to right. The tracker is very directionally sensitive and shows the directional signal strength by lighting more or less LEDs. By walking in the suggested direction, stopping and re-scanning and following the new line, you'll rapidly close in as the tracker starts to beep faster and light more LEDs the closer it gets. Once you start to get really close, you'll also hear the tag beeping as it also has a little beeper built in.
The device works on 2.4GHz which means that range is limited to 120 metres or so if you're looking for a target on the ground. It also means that you need a line of sight path between the tracker and the tag. If your quad is up a tree, the range will be considerably more.
The directionality of the tracker's antenna is good enough to allow you to home in within inches of the tag. I've tested this by hurling one of the tags, eyes closed, as far as I could into the grass at the field where I fly. Finding the tag again was a piece of cake.
As you can open up the tag to replace the battery, there's a small chance that the tag can pop open in a crash and eject the battery, but a strip of tape around the edge of the tag removes that risk.
The loc8tor has already paid for itself several times over. Long grass and bushes no longer have me worrying if I'll lose another quad! It's not utterly foolproof, given that it uses the 2.4GHz band. In the worst case, the tag could end up underneath your carbon fibre frame and be unable to hear the activation signal from the tracker. You might also forget to check that the battery in the tag is still OK before you fly. Thankfully, none of these things have happened to me and as I say, it's paid for itself several times already by helping me find a downed craft.
For really long range stuff, you're probably better off with a much lower frequency device that doesn't need line of sight and includes a GPS receiver so that it can broadcast its coordinates. For FPV quads though, the loc8tor is great insurance.
Of course, by the time you rip your goggles off, the crash has already happened and your quad is nowhere to be seen. Long grass, bushes and trees all conspire to make finding your quad a worrying exercise!
If you have a receiver with RSSI telemetry back to your radio, you are in a much better position than those without as the RSSI level will help you home in on where your beloved flying machine is hiding. If you don't, or your battery gets ejected in the crash, the search gets much more difficult.
Having lost one quad myself (a very nice Armattan MRP130), I vowed that I wouldn't lose another one! My solution? One of these:
I've added some velcro underneath the little disc and use that to attach it to another small square of velcro on the craft. The loop of fishing line ensures that the tracking disc stays with the quad even if the crash is violent enough to rip it off the velcro. Both the disc and the credit card sized tracker run off CR2032 batteries which last around six months in my experience.
Up to four tags can be bound to one tracker - one for each of the four buttons - which saves you from having to keep swapping a single tag from one craft to the next.
When the inevitable happens and you have to find your craft, using the tracker is simplicity itself. You wake up the tracker and press the button that corresponds to the tag you want to find while pointing the tracker in the assumed general direction of the tag. If the tracker manages to activate the tag, a number of the LEDs on the tracker will light up and it will being beeping. If it doesn't activate the tag, walk in the general direction and try again. It normally works first time. Once the LEDs light up, hold the tracker horizontally in your hand and turn from left to right. The tracker is very directionally sensitive and shows the directional signal strength by lighting more or less LEDs. By walking in the suggested direction, stopping and re-scanning and following the new line, you'll rapidly close in as the tracker starts to beep faster and light more LEDs the closer it gets. Once you start to get really close, you'll also hear the tag beeping as it also has a little beeper built in.
The device works on 2.4GHz which means that range is limited to 120 metres or so if you're looking for a target on the ground. It also means that you need a line of sight path between the tracker and the tag. If your quad is up a tree, the range will be considerably more.
The directionality of the tracker's antenna is good enough to allow you to home in within inches of the tag. I've tested this by hurling one of the tags, eyes closed, as far as I could into the grass at the field where I fly. Finding the tag again was a piece of cake.
As you can open up the tag to replace the battery, there's a small chance that the tag can pop open in a crash and eject the battery, but a strip of tape around the edge of the tag removes that risk.
The loc8tor has already paid for itself several times over. Long grass and bushes no longer have me worrying if I'll lose another quad! It's not utterly foolproof, given that it uses the 2.4GHz band. In the worst case, the tag could end up underneath your carbon fibre frame and be unable to hear the activation signal from the tracker. You might also forget to check that the battery in the tag is still OK before you fly. Thankfully, none of these things have happened to me and as I say, it's paid for itself several times already by helping me find a downed craft.
For really long range stuff, you're probably better off with a much lower frequency device that doesn't need line of sight and includes a GPS receiver so that it can broadcast its coordinates. For FPV quads though, the loc8tor is great insurance.
![[-]](https://intofpv.com/images/collapse.png)
and luckily I learned it early too.
![[Image: stripline_zpshn97b8kb.png]](http://i1156.photobucket.com/albums/p579/grizewald/Mobile%20Uploads/2017-04/stripline_zpshn97b8kb.png)
