The results I got were difficult to obtain. I had to use a poor performance antenna on the receiver with the added noise of an electric motor & controller to see any problems.
With this poor installation, the Smiley was unflyable. The Becker did OK but the range was limited to ~200 feet. Then it'd begin to glitch badly. Only the factory antenna worked well but I only flew it to ~500 feet. Though it never did experience glitching at that range. Your 50% approximation of the Smiley's loss of range is pretty good. I'd "ballpark" the Becker at 25%. The theoretical minimum loss to any of these coiled antennas is quoted to be 15%. But I've never experienced that personally. My saying is "the shorter the antenna, the worser the performance". I've never found anything that disagrees with this though I'd love to find one. Bill Swingle Janesville, CA RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
