bit of a comparison question but also a troubleshooting thing. ive been running TBS Crossfire on my 5 inch freestyle build for about two years and never had a serious issue but i do most of my flying in pretty clean RF environments. i recently started getting access to fly around a industrial park type situation, lots of large metal structures, some machinery running, probably some EMI in the mix.

a friend keeps pushing me toward ELRS and says its better in noisy environments because of the frequency hopping and lower latency but im not 100% sure he actually knows what hes talking about or if hes just repeating stuff he read. Crossfire at 868mhz should penetrate pretty well and ive trusted it for a long time. dont really want to rebuild my whole setup if Crossfire is actually fine here.

anyone actually flown both systems in environments with real interference, not just open fields or suburbs. curious if there's an actual meaningful difference or if both systems are solid enough that its not worth worrying about

your friend isnt totally wrong but hes not entirely right either. ELRS has gotten really good and the 900mhz version specifically does well in cluttered environments, the frequency hopping does seem to help when theres intermittent noise sources. that said ive been running Crossfire in some pretty gnarly locations including around a working quarry with heavy equipment and it held up fine. i think the honest answer is both are good enough that your antenna placement and orientation on the quad matters more than which system youre running. if your crossfire antennas are well positioned and your receiver isnt buried under a carbon plate you should be okay.

i switched from crossfire to ELRS 900 earlier this year mostly for the cost savings on receivers tbh, not performance reasons. havent noticed any real difference in reliability but i also dont fly in anything that wild. one thing i will say is the ELRS lua script gives you way more visibility into whats actually happening with your link quality in real time which is kind of nice for diagnosing problems if you do start getting weird dropouts. might be worth it just for that if you're flying somewhere sketchy