At first glance, it appears to be some form of active beam-steering antenna (closeup below)
If that is the case, is this active antenna handling the primary communication path, then relaying video and control link(s) to the handheld via low powered omni-directional radio (eg bluetooth, WiFi)? I could understand the 100mW power figure on airborne TX if there is such a high-gain ground unit as I’ve described.
For public safety, I think flying over the sea is more responsible. If you lose your aircraft, you can buy it with money, but there are some things you can’t buy.
I live in one of the most densely populated places in the world. I can hardly find any space to fly 60 km. I hope I live in the desert, so I can fly everyday without worrying about safety.
I’d actually suggest shorter range tests with 30dB attenuators (or even more) on the antennas. It is quite hard to do real long range testing reliabily, much easier to test with an attenuator then extrapolate.
Once results are shown with an attenuator, then doing some real-world long distance tests are worthwhile as well, but they can be quite difficult to manage (getting line of sight, earth curvature etc)
Cheers, Tridge
This is a complete set of uplink downlink. It’s not a remote control + a telemetry.
The signal is transmitted 110 times per second and the received signal is 110 times. The transmitted signals contain control signals and app data, and the returned signals contain flight control data and other extended data. The receiver has SBUs serial port, PWM and USB. The transmitter has Bluetooth and USB interface to connect app.
I live in a farm, first city at 30 km, I can give some tests if you need, looks interesting equipment for farming tasks. We need 5-10 km with safe connection, not at limit one.