I am currently building drones for my school project. The requirement is to carry a  500grams package to the top of a volcano in Mexico at 17,000 ft altitude . The  drones must have a range of 4 MILES and all of the system must be analog. 

I have compiled a list of what I got. Since we will be carrying 500grams of payload I decided to use 5.8ghz frequency to lower the weight of the antennas which means that the antennas chosen must be really important. 

I am responsible for avionics/telemetry on my team so these are the specs that I have acquired (Attached). https://gyazo.com/3707483f2db84cf098fa5197dc9907fa I hope you can take and look and give me some feedback/recommendations in order to successfully complete this project. I am a total beginner to FPV and drone in general too!

Thank you. 

Your radio link system will work.

The video link setup is probably the best you can get for a 5.8gz system, but your result will very greatly by your surroundings. I am no expert on long range, so hopefully someone else can weigh in.

That's no easy task your looking to achieve. Most of these quads on here can do this without a payload but with one your really looking at something a fair bit larger most likely a large Aerial photography style rig. I use a tarot 650 with extended arms and 17" props for lifting my Sony 6500 camera, that should be a comparable payload. I don't believe I could easily do 4 miles with that setup and a payload.

With a pixhawk your going to be running arducopter. Crossfire may not be the best choice depending on what telemetry options your looking to use. Personally I prefer dragonlink or r9 with ardupilot. Crossfire would likely get you by though.

Here's a recent article discussing crossfire and mission planner/ arducopter.
https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/current-...ooth/59316

being that this will be a larger quad you could easily use 1.2/1 3ghz video for a more solid video link.

Is it 1way trip?

17000ft is near impossible climb. Air gets thinner. Efficiency plummets. That is 5180m up. AND carryin g 500g!!

going up 36kph..
P = V m g
P = 10m/s * (1kg drone + 1.5kg battery +0.5) * 9.8 = 300W for 518sec.. 9min. Thats huge amount of energy to climb
+
power to hover
+
efficiency loses

Maybe .. If you had $9million budget.

2 easy solutions
+ attach helium balloon.
+ attach to rocket or plane.
+ or just dont do quadcopter..make large helicopter

I found video of guy who took modified DJI drone to Mt Everest. aka 29000feet. It was freezing cold. Battery would only last 15min. He flew like 1km away, turned around and took panorama pictures of the peak. And quickly returned back.

But, he started flying at 26000feet. He was already near the peak. And not carrying 500g cargo.


Moving on...
range of 4 miles = 6.5km (one way).

This is very easy. All my 5" and 4" toothpicks can fly 10km+, and 12min+. More if you use Li-ion 18650 pack.

But, your cargo is 500g!
Your quadcopter will need to be 1-2kg minimum.. 15" to 18" propellers.

OP is not asking whether if it possible to build a quad to do what he mentioned. That is not him job. He is just asking about radio link and video link. I do agree that it will take a fairly large and powerful quad to do what they want to achieve. The reality is, a lot of things that we thought was impossible eventually became reality. Hats off to OP and his team for pushing the limits.

(18-Jan-2021, 06:48 PM)voodoo614 Wrote: Your radio link system will work.

The video link setup is probably the best you can get for a 5.8gz system, but your result will very greatly by your surroundings. I am no expert on long range, so hopefully someone else can weigh in.

Alright thanks for your insight! What do you think of the antennas choices?

(18-Jan-2021, 07:57 PM)EVILsteve Wrote: That's no easy task your looking to achieve. Most of these quads on here can do this without a payload but with one your really looking at something a fair bit larger most likely a large Aerial photography style rig. I use a tarot 650 with extended arms and 17" props for lifting my Sony 6500 camera, that should be a comparable payload. I don't believe I could easily do 4 miles with that setup and a payload.

With a pixhawk your going to be running arducopter. Crossfire may not be the best choice depending on what telemetry options your looking to use. Personally I prefer dragonlink or r9 with ardupilot. Crossfire would likely get you by though.

Here's a recent article discussing crossfire and mission planner/ arducopter.
https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/current-...ooth/59316

being that this will be a larger quad you could easily use 1.2/1 3ghz video for a more solid video link.

Alright thanks for your insight! What do you think of the antennas choices? Maybe you can give me your recommended the specs I need for video/control. But the propulsion team already calculate all the dynamics and they know for a fact that we can get there with 12.5 in blade and strong motors. Our budget is 3k USD.

(19-Jan-2021, 03:39 AM)romangpro Wrote: Is it 1way trip?

17000ft is near impossible climb. Air gets thinner. Efficiency plummets. That is 5180m up. AND carryin g 500g!!

going up 36kph..
P = V m g
P = 10m/s * (1kg drone + 1.5kg battery +0.5) * 9.8 = 300W for 518sec.. 9min. Thats huge amount of energy to climb
+
power to hover
+
efficiency loses

Maybe .. If you had $9million budget.

4 miles is a safety range factor. the precise range would be 2.2 mile one way. Our budget is 3kUSD.

(20-Jan-2021, 12:38 AM)khiemmessier27 Wrote: Alright thanks for your insight! What do you think of the antennas choices?

I am not familiar enough with long range antenna to provide any insight.