Turnigy 9X and DragonLink Problems

Spydamonky

Junior Member
Hey guys,

I have a Turnigy 9X, I have modded the radio in almost every way possible. Most notably after the radio fell off my piano snapping the antenna, a SMA for antenna and module removal (If you ask nicely I can write up an article on how to do it as well as all my other mods). I recently got a DragonLink V2 and hooked it up to my radio. All seems ok, except a weird loss of contrast on the LCD that occurs when the sticks are in certain positions. I never seem to loss RC link which indicated that it wasn't a loss of power. Which I can't seem to figure out! After hours of playing around with connections, trying with the 2.4Ghz module and with the DragonLink. I had determined it was something to do with the Dragonlink being plugged in. So I thought maybe a current draw issue as I have a backlight running too. However, I repeated the previous test but this time I didn't remove the 2.4Ghz antenna before plugging in the DragonLink. Presto, it is now perfect!

I find this baffling as the antenna is connected to nothing essentially as the Dragonlink does not use the Antenna pin of the module header. I have noticed that the antenna pin in the 9X is grounded, which again I find wierd. But I have tested my SMA mod and I got a better range due to the use of a better antenna salvaged from my 2.4Ghz LawMate video Transmitter.

I would love if someone could shed some light on what is going on here.

Thank you very much in advance
 

Spydamonky

Junior Member
UPDATE - SOLVED?:

I solved the problem, it turns out the bare SMA connector (Which is rather close to the UHF antenna was picking up a lot of noise and causing the issue. I put the DragonLink in MicroPower mode where it outputs it's minimum RF and the LCD is perfect. I think that the application of the 2.4Ghz antenna did a good job of filtering out this noise because of it's band rejection. Anyway, I will leave this post up incase someone else comes up with the same problem :)