ok so this has been bugging me for a while and i cant figure out if its my vtx, my antennas, or just the field im flying at. getting this real choppy static breakup at medium range, like 200-300 meters, but then if i go further out it actually gets cleaner sometimes which makes no sense to me

running a 600mw vtx (the foxeer one, cant remember exact model) with a cloverleaf on the quad and a pagoda on the goggle side. someone told me i should be running matched circular polarization on both ends but the pagoda is linear isnt it? or is it omnidirectional circular? i genuinely dont know and ive gotten three different answers from three different people

the field has some metal bleachers and a big chain link fence on one side which might be causing reflections but i see other people fly there without the issue. maybe their rx antenna setup is just better. or maybe my vtx is dying, it did take a pretty hard hit a few months ago

should i just throw a pair of TrueRC antennas at the problem or is there something more systematic i should check first

pagoda is actually circular polarized, RHCP specifically, so that part of your setup is fine. the cloverleaf on the quad should also be RHCP so they match, make sure you didnt accidentally get a LHCP cloverleaf because that will kill your signal something awful even at short range. like a 20-30db hit which is massive

the behavior you're describing where far is sometimes better than mid range is classic multipath interference. the metal bleachers are almost certainly bouncing a reflected signal that's hitting your receiver slightly out of phase with the direct signal. nothing really fixes that except physically changing your position or flying at different altitudes. some people run a patch or helical on the goggle side instead of omni to help reject off-angle reflections but then you lose omnidirectional coverage which is its own problem

id check the RHCP/LHCP thing first before spending money on antennas

honestly if the vtx took a hard knock i'd just replace it first. those foxeer vtxs are not expensive and power output degrades after impacts, the onboard filters and stuff can get messed up. ive had one that tested fine on the bench but was putting out noisy garbage on certain frequencies after a crash. swapped it and the problem went away. sometimes its that simple