this has been bugging me for like three weeks. flew a small local comp last weekend and twice during my heat runs the video just went to static for like half a second and then came back. didnt crash but i lost a ton of time both times because i had to slow down to not bin it into a gate blind.

im running a Rush Tank on 400mw, 5.8ghz obviously, and im using a Rapidfire module on my goggles. the other pilots in my heat were also on 5.8 and the RD wasn't great about frequency assignment honestly, i think two of us ended up pretty close together on the band. but also my vtx does get pretty warm to the touch after a couple minutes which made me think maybe its throttling or something.

hard to know if its a heat issue or just straight up interference from the other pilots. anyone dealt with this before, is there a way to tell which one it actually is

if it was interference from adjacent channels the dropouts would probably be more correlated to when the other pilots were near you or on the same part of the course, like if it happened right when someone flew close thats a decent clue. vtx thermal throttling is usually more gradual and you'd see the signal degrade progressively rather than a sudden blink of static and then back to normal. the fact that it came back clean both times makes me lean toward interference tbh.

Rush Tank on Raceband channels should be fine but if your RD put two people on like R1 and R3 thats gonna cause issues regardless of how good your setup is. for next time its worth just politely asking to see the frequency chart before your heat starts, most RDs are fine with it and at least you'll know

400mw in a multi-pilot heat is also kinda asking for trouble depending on the course size. i run 200mw for anything where people are flying close together, the extra power doesnt really help when the problem is adjacent frequencies bleeding into each other, it just makes your interference worse for everyone else too. might be worth trying a lower power setting and see if it changes anything at the next practice