Hi Lee and Peter, and thanks for such a swift reply and for your ideas.
Let me expand on my setup further. I have a PAW classic fitted to my flexwing microlight. PAW was mounted under the base bar, under the legs of the pilot. The transponder antennae was mounted on the base bar in front of the battery (never had any issues with transponder receipt, can see right to the stratosphere!).
The PAW antennae has been in different positions in the front pod. Mindful of the advice to try to avoid metal or human shielding it’s been on the side of the front pod, down at the end of the nose offset to one side, and cable tied to the front strut.
When I first got PAW (April 2016) I was impressed by the range it would pick other aircraft up over, but it was when I was on FlyUK in June 17 that I realised that it wasn’t consistently working as well as it used to. I remember at the time it was sometimes playing up, sometimes crashing, sometimes losing connection to SkyDemon, and other times working perfectly. I have screen shots from that trip showing other PAW planes 15 miles away and I also can recall other times when the range was down to just a few km.
When we were weathered in at East Fortune I spoke to Peter about the problem and tried to diagnose the issue. I certainly flew at least one leg with the PAW antennae screwed straight into the PAW without the extension lead, and it didn’t make any noticeable difference.
Eventually after the trip and following Peter’s suggestions I traced the stability problem down to the power supply lead. I was using the PAW supplied 22AWG cable but over the year I’d used it the cable had obviously weakened and I found that wiggling the micro usb plug in the PAW I could induce the same drop-outs and loss of PAW. Bought a new 22AWG micro USB heavy duty cable off ebay and the crashes disappeared.
But I think through all this time I have still had the limited PAW range issue. I’ve noticed limited range in receiving PAW traffic and its only since I have moved the PAW to a new plane and been flying without the transponder fitted that my flying buddies had noticed the same issue with my transmission range. With the transponder normally on they’ve been able to see me much further, but just with PAW on, they now can’t.
For all the time that the PAW was in the other flexwing I powered it with a standalone battery brick. This probably contributed to the failure of the power lead as the brick was loose in the footwell and thus the cable would move around. Since moving to the new flexwing I have powered PAW with an Anker Powerdrive 2 USB cigarette socket adaptor and the plan is to wire it in more permanently with an Anker mounted in a box and fused to the plane.
PAW antennae is currently cable tied to the bottom of the front strut. The antennae extension lead came from ebay, its about 1/2 m long.
Attached are photos of the config and other screens and I will PM three trace files to Lee. The first one shows the problem quite clearly as I climb out of Sandy and lose contact with the other PAW plane on the ground.
Thanks, Geoffrey