Shorten antenna question.

[Mr.JayDeeM]

I got my 1st crawler after viewing this forum for almost an year. I got a slightly used RTC Ax10 from ebay. There's some things I wanted to change on the rig. !st thing I noticed that the antenna is too long. I was wondering if there a way to shorten it? I examine the antenna base, wire and the tube for the wire to go through. I was wondering if it will be safe to cut it down shorter to the point where it barely poking out the body hole?

Any suggestion?

[Trubble]

Cutting is a rather unwise idea.

Either do like I used to do, get something you can wrap the wire around, leave however long of a tail you think you want, secure the 'spool' of wire. (but do not tape or zip-tie the spool of excess wire to any metal or carbon fiber parts such as chassis plates, battery trays, radio/ESC mounts, etc)
Or you could take a strip of plastic or cardboard, cut notches in the sides, and wind the wire around the flap, and leave that under the body.

Avoid pointing the transmitter's antenna directly at the vehicle, st there's more radio signals radiated from the sides than the tip of the antenna.

[AX10wannabe]

ya dont cut it.. you can however fold it onto itself into a bundle then use a small ziptie to hold it then leave it.. make sure its not going to get caught up in the spur gear or pinched.

[2012Honcho]

I used a plastic 3 link plate to hold the wire for my boys ax10...made a bunch of small holes and weaved the wire thru ...works GREAT!!!

[TSK]

If it's a 2.4ghz system, you can open up the rx case and just coil the antenna inside. Crawlers don't need big range so it'll work fine.

I'm not sure which system the RTC came with though. The one that comes with the wraith has a tiny rx that doesn't really have the space to coil the antenna in, so the other suggested methods will ahve to do.

[Mr.JayDeeM]

I choped the plastic tube and then wrap the coil around the tube and scere it with electrical tape for now.

[Stormin2u]

Here's a picture of a antenna wire woven through holes in a small piece of angle Lexan.

[Hardline]

It's wire. Shorten it however you want -- you can solder it longer again, but you won't have to. My Futaba 2106 is a 2.4GHz receiver just like the AE-2 and came with a 1" antenna. And it's a parkflyer airplane receiver.

[Mr.JayDeeM]

Thats a good idea where you have your wire coiled up. I have a small issue. I got my RTR all stock and it has a battery tray on top. So, I gotta come up with something. Will it hurt anything if I dont put the antenna through the hole but just let it rest under the body? I'm getting an Jeep Cherokee body so it should have plenty of room for it to sit on it own..

[TSK]

Cutting an antenna is not a good idea. The 2.4ghz systems have them tuned to specific lengths. AM & FM rx's lose significant range when getting cut. The park flyer antenna is probably so short for cleaner, more efficient packaging.

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by Mr.JayDeeM

Will it hurt anything if I dont put the antenna through the hole but just let it rest under the body?

This is exactly how I run mine now, works fine. Even back when I had my batteries up on top, still had no problems.

[Mr.JayDeeM]

Alright, thanks.

[Hardline]

Originally Posted by TheSCorpionKing

Cutting an antenna is not a good idea. The 2.4ghz systems have them tuned to specific lengths. AM & FM rx's lose significant range when getting cut.

You know, everybody says that, but I can't help but think you're all just quoting each other.

Who has cut their antenna wire shorter and experienced problems? What model, how short?

I cut the last 3" off my AE-2 to a length that fit well along the top rail of my CF chassis and taped it down. No problems.

[TSK]

Originally Posted by Hardline

You know, everybody says that, but I can't help but think you're all just quoting each other.

Who has cut their antenna wire shorter and experienced problems? What model, how short?

I cut the last 3" off my AE-2 to a length that fit well along the top rail of my CF chassis and taped it down. No problems.

Try sticking that AE-2 in a SC truck and blast that thing down the road as see how far it gets before you go chasing after it.

I threw one oft speky rx's with an antenna coiled in the case Into SC for a cleaner setup and nearly got my truck run over as it lost range and sailed off the field into a parking lot.

I've tested for distance after, and the internally oiled rx gave me a range of about 20-25 parked side by side before things got sketchy.

If I recall correctly, Spektrum even states in their manual, that the tip of the rx antenna "should" be a minimum of an inch "higher" than the top of the rx.

At most, how dat do you stand from your crawler when running? Crawler range and racing/bashing range is two different animals. You CAN cut your crawler rx's antenna and be ok, you just can't use it in anything else after.

That said I'd rather coil up the antenna on my $50-100 rx's and be able to use them for all my surface rc applications, than he stuck with a $50-100 that has crap for range. You an quote me on that one.

[Hardline]

Originally Posted by TheSCorpionKing

Try sticking that AE-2 in a SC truck and blast that thing down the road as see how far it gets before you go chasing after it.

Good thing I don't have this in an SC truck. I'm a crawler. You can shorten your antenna on a crawler. If you don't like how it worked out you can solder it back on again. Testing trumps asking.