Futaba 4pl

[Norton]

I'm running a Futaba 4pl with the R2104GF. While cleaning today I found like 3" of my antenna on the floor. I assume I tore it off while testing my SCX10.
Anyway, I have not noticed any reduction in range and there is still like 3" of antenna sticking out of my receiver box. Should I be worried about this? Solder it back on?

If it were just a crawler I wouldn't be worried but I have the RC4WD two speed tranny and gets going pretty good in second.

Thanks guy.

[noobiescaler35]

I wouldn't worry too much about it my scx10 has no antenna and goes about 50 yards from me and that's with a stock radio so your nice futaba shouldn't have any issues

[oo C64 oo]

In short, if its not glitching out I wouldn't worry. However from an electronics point of view, the receiver antenna wire is exactly matched for a specific frequency. The new Ghz range of Tx's and Rx's have very short wires, and they are matched.

In the past older radios if you can compare them side by side ie 40Mhz with say a 27Mhz that the wire lengths are different..
Years ago (the 80's) I used to snip my receiver wires for visual looks (silly) and it took a while before I realised I was doing something bad... If it does glitch out in the future, you can always pull apart your receiver and solder a new wire in, make sure you get the length right..I am sure peeps here can also help with that length if required. Don't attach the broken wires together, this creates differing wavelengths, just make a brand new full length wire...

[Norton]

Thanks guy's, since I see no bad habits I'm not going to mess with it.

[YJ_Driver]

Actually you cut off the whole antenna as I explain below, but it's easy to fix. You just have to strip off 30mm of the coax shield and it'll be as good as new. Here's why.

2.4GHz receivers only use the last 1 1/8 inch (30mm) of the antenna wire. That's because the rest is a coax cable which is a shield around the antenna wire. They do this so you can place the receiving part of the antenna (that last inch) away from interfering electronics. This differs from 27, 40 and 75MHz radio antennas which are over a foot long and the whole wire is used to receive the signal.

You can see in this pic how the last inch is missing the coax shield:


The length of the coax shield doesn't matter, only the length of exposed wire which must be 30mm for optimum reception.