just wanted to share something ive been testing because i see this question come up a lot and most answers are kinda vague. been flying a freefly ember with crossfire for fpv but also messing around with my autel evo 2 for filming stuff and the 2.4 vs 5.8 debate is way more situational than people make it seem.

so i live near a university campus, absolutely brutal for 2.4ghz, hundreds of wifi networks, bluetooth everywhere, its a mess. for the longest time i assumed 5.8 was better because its less congested in my area but after doing some back to back testing with a spectrum analyzer my buddy brought over... 5.8 was actually worse in one specific direction from my usual flying spot because theres apparently a commercial AP array on one of the buildings that just hammers that band. switched back to 2.4 and picked a channel manually instead of auto and got way more stable links even at distance.

point is just run a spectrum analyzer before you assume which band is cleaner, the auto channel selection on most systems is honestly not that smart, it scans at ground level before takeoff and doesnt account for what you fly into as you climb or move. curious if anyone else has done methodical testing on this or if im just getting lucky with my particular setup

yeah this tracks. people treat 5.8 like its automatically the answer to interference and its not. higher frequency also means more susceptible to physical obstructions, so if youre flying around buildings 5.8 can degrade way faster even if the spectrum looks clean. crossfire on 2.4 with good channel selection is hard to beat for reliability in urban areas imo, the link budget is just better.

honestly never thought about the spectrum changing as you climb, thats a really good point. i just always left mine on auto and assumed it was doing something smart. gonna borrow a spectrum analyzer from someone at my club and actually do this properly. do you scan at multiple heights or just looking for general congestion at ground level before you fly?