Originally Posted by
digitech
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Imagine you are in a large room listening to someone whispering at the other side of the room.
The volume is low ( A values) but you can clearly make out every word, high Q value.
Now fill the room with other people all talking, the noise level is very high, the person talking to you is almost shouting in your ear ( high volume, high A value) but you still cannot make out some words they say,
low Q value. So what matters most is the Q value because you want to make out all the words they are saying regardless of how loud.
This is exactly how I explain this concept as well
Q is important but what is also important is to understand that all of what we and the transmitter know of Q, signal strength (A1/A2) and all other telemetry is dependent on the quality of the downlink. Since the Jeti system is designed with the intent of losing the downlink before the uplink there is a margin that can be used to continue to fly even when the downlink is lost and alarms based on this downlinked data are screaming at us. How big is the margin? Testing in fairly quiet RF environments with onboard data loggers has shown anywhere from 15-30% better uplink "Q" than what is reported on the downlink. Is this safe? Well, before the Jeti system there really wasn't much live downlinked telmetery available to us. We all would fly and range out until something bad happened. Most of the time everything worked out great and we got to fly again. But every now and then we found ourselves running towards our out of control airplanes transmitter held high above our head screaming "I ain't got it!". I would never say downlinked telemetry is requited for safe flight but I do like having it available to make better decisions.