so i need to replace the antenna on my vtx and when i was looking at options i noticed theres left hand and right hand circular polarized versions and i just grabbed an rhcp one because it was in stock but now im second guessing myself because i think my goggles might have lhcp antennas and i cant remember where i read that mixing them is bad

the quad is a 5inch running a 400mw vtx, nothing fancy. flying mostly parks and a bit of open field. signal has been fine so far but i havent really pushed range yet

is this something i should care about or am i overthinking it

yeah you want them to match. mixing lhcp and rhcp kills like 20-30db of signal which sounds technical but basically means you're throwing away a huge chunk of your range and multipath rejection for no reason. the whole point of circular polarization is that when you match the chirality on both ends you get way better performance in environments with reflections like trees buildings etc

check what antennas came stock on your goggles, most fatshark and skyzone units ship with rhcp by default so you might already be fine. if you're using a diversity receiver with two antennas some people actually run one of each on purpose to cover both but thats a specific setup and not what most people do

tldr just make sure both ends match and you'll be good, the brand of antenna matters less than getting the polarization right

this confused me for a long time too. i just bought a pack of lumenier axii antennas in rhcp for both my goggles and vtx and called it a day. the axii's are probably overkill for park flying but they were on sale and i figured why not

one thing i'll add that nobody mentioned to me when i started ? make sure the connector type actually matches before you order. i bought the wrong SMA vs RP-SMA twice before i figured out what i was looking at lol. check twice before you order