I have a small betafpv meteor65 pro tinywhoop that I have been flying around for the past month or so. This little bugger is a resilient piece of microscopic tech. It has rammed into walls, ceilings, tree trunks, branches, turned into a lawn mower and it still soldiers on.
My first real issue happened when flying indoors though. I landed softly (enough) on the sofa and then swapped out the battery for a fresh one.
As soon as it started flying again the video had the worse quality, range and penetration I’ve ever gotten out of that little mosquito.
My first thought was that I had fucked the antenna in a propeller or something, even though it didn’t have visible damage.
To the workbench! 🔧
Lets try to take off the cannopy… Pop the antenna off the VTX and turn this thing on, lets see what happens.
Well… Transmission is still crap, same as with the antenna. If I put the drone under the table it is enough to block all the signal. Now I can safely bet the issue is the antenna!
I know you shouldn’t turn it on without the antenna, but it is set to transmit at 25mW, so it should be fine.
Lets try with the multimeter. Strip the antenna’s heatshrink and test the continuity between the tip, bell, and connector. All looks good… Weird.
The VTX’s LED doesn’t look faded or anything… Maybe I should order an extra VTX just in case… Naaa, I’m cheap, lets get some extra antennas instead from Aliexpress and go back to the simulator in the meantime!
The next day…
Maybe it’s a software issue 🤔 Lets try to connect it to the Betaflight configurator just in case…
Oh look!
The VTX tab is propperly messed up.
The VTX table is full of ªªªªª and all the other values are full of junk.
Lets try to flash a recent backup of the configuration and… Voilá! Everything is back up and flying again with awesome video quality.
Now I just have to re-heatshrink the antenna and Bob’s your uncle.
It must have been a transient when plugging or unplugging the battery that screwed up the VTX’s flash/eprom/whatever.