EKF Spikes when tractor trailers drive by

ArduCopter
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Has anyone noticed EKF spikes when tractor trailers (semis) are in the vicinity during flight? Could this be coming from their CB radios?

This happened to me and was wondering if someone could nail down what was happening. I use a Futaba 14SG transmitter operating on 2404-2480 MHz for transmitting and receiving spatial position data. Telemetry system operates at 915-928 MHz and the Connex video link is 5138-5808 MHz.

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More reading might help

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Suggestions on material? Ambattuhari

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Could it be related to the compass? Big trucks = big chunk of ferrous metal.

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I’ve changed the category to “Copter” because this was originally set as “Blog” so it was appearing on the front page of ardupilot.org.

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No, CB radios are 11 meters. The interference is coming from the GPRS transponders installed in commercial trucks. They are 5 watt power output and will cause complete loss of GPS signal if you get too close. Best advice is to stay away from them with drones that depend on GPS.

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Thanks. No problem

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Thanks for the info! This was what I thought, but other colleagues were telling me it was the CB radio which uses 2.6 MHz. If you have any defining material, I’d love to see it. Thanks again.

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CB Radio is 26-27MHz. Look up truck fleet position tracking and fleet logistics. Most all fleet trucks are tracked these days by the dispatchers in real time. They use quite powerful commercial-grade systems that are licensed. The front end of the receiver in your consumer-grade system will get totally overloaded if you get too close to those transmitters.

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