hello all!

i was charging my RM boxer (via usb) on my bedside when i successfully managed to fall asleep. no fortunately the thing did not go up in flames, BUT when i woke up i also unwittingly powered up the unit to confirm full-charge. only then it dawned upon me that the antenna was detached! it was ON for like 10secs. on 100mW output only. 

SO did i inflict any serious damage to the internal module? while these things have a stern warning of attaching antenna during power up, are these modules capable of handling this type of abuse to a limited extent?

I think you’ll be just fine. You’ll find out for sure if you damaged it soon enough- if you have absolute crap for range.

In the worst case all you'll have to do is to replace the internal ExpressLRS module.

i flew it (upto at least 350m out) after just to check and seems to be working as it previously did. hopefully it did not incur any serious damage.

Good quality radios will probably take the abuse without issue, when lesser radios would be damaged.

My Flea quad has had the antenna fall out of the VTX four or five times now and it is outputting 200mW. The last time it was armed for a good 5-10 secs without an antenna. So this is a cheap HM VTX, and not even an OVX, it's probably the Diamond VTX. So 4-5 times it has been transmitting without an antenna. Still works fine. It's also overheated a couple of times too.

I used hot glue to better hold ufl antenna to canopy of 3".

Had bad crash into tall weeds. Took over 10min to find. Battery still plugged in. Canopy scorching hot. Antenna gone. All the hot glue melted all over vtx and camera.

I keep complaining why parts randomly fail... Im just starting to remember just how many crashes Ive had.