This antenna is suitable for use on small electric models such as the T-Rex.
The antenna itself comes in a small bag with a short set of instructions for installing the antenna and a tiny piece of heatshrink tubing for covering the point of solder. The review model is the bright yellow version, other colours available are black and blue.
The first task is to cut the existing receiver aerial to a length of 4 inches, I used a normal set of wire snips to do this.
The instructions then say to strip 1/8 inch of plastic from the existing antenna and solder the now exposed antenna wire to the mini power antenna. Having done this you can then place the heat shrink tubing over the join, shrink to fit and the installation is complete.
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Having done this the instructions stress the importance of a range test before flying.
So T-Rex in hand I headed to the field to check out the capabilities of my new antenna. I should note at this point that having recently had a transmitter module failure I did approach this part of the test with some trepidation.
The range aerial down was actually not as far as I would have liked, having said that my transmitter has never had much of a range with the aerial down, despite assurances from the distributor that it is functioning within specification. In comparison to the normal long wire antenna I was getting a shorter range but nothing to be of concern.
Next I took off the blades, put up the aerial and set off to see just how far away I could get with the T-Rex on the ground. I managed to get so far away that I couldn't really see the model properly any longer but still had good control to spin up the head or move the paddles.
There was nothing for it but to try a proper flight now and see what would happen. Blades were refitted and I lifted off into a hover. I proceeded to do larger and larger circuits to test the range a bit at a time. Eventually reaching the point where to fly any larger circuit was going to give me a serious eye strain. Although on a dull day with a micro it isn't difficult to get to this point.
This large circuit test didn't show any sign of glitch or lack of responsiveness, so the T-Rex was put into idle up and some loops and rolls were executed to present different angles between myself and the antenna, again no problems.
I was starting to enjoy myself now and any thoughts of radio problems were rapidly disappearing. Unfortunately I enjoyed myself a bit too much and ended the flight by dumb thumbing the T-Rex into the ground, nothing I might add to do with the antenna which behaved faultlessly throughout.
Overall given the cost of this little antenna and the faultless performance it provided it has now become one of my 'must have' items and I will be installing these on my rapidly forming fleet of T-Rex. Having already missed one evenings flying due to stepping on my antenna by mistake I can now say goodbye to that long piece of unsightly dangling wire that continually gets in the way and install some rather cool looking mini-power antennas.
Update 06/03/2005 :
Yesterday I attended an indoor event with the T-Rex, using an Align receiver and the MAP Micro Antenna.
The event was held at Twickenham which is a very large hall with a metal roof. Not the best environment for glitch free radio operation.
The radio combination I was running on 35mhz :
Hitec Eclipse 7
Align Receiver with Futaba single conversion crystal
MAP Micro Antenna
I didn't experience a single glitch, even when running the T-Rex directly infront of several other transmitters some distance away from myself. I continue to be impressed with the capability of this little antenna.