been doing more long range stuff lately on a 7 inch build and trying to figure out if my antenna situation is actually the weak point or if its something else. running a lollipop on the vtx right now which i think is circular polarized but honestly i bought it like a year ago off amazon and im not 100% sure its actually quality or just some knockoff that looks the part.

my goggles are fat shark recon v3 with the stock patch and dipole antennas that came with them, diversity module is the rapidfire which i know is well regarded but i feel like im still getting breakup at distances that shouldnt be a problem. like 400-500m line of sight in open fields and im getting artifacts and occasional signal loss which doesnt seem right for 600mw output.

someone at the field mentioned the pagoda antenna design and said it outperforms lollipops in most real world scenarios but i couldnt really get a clear answer on why from him. is this actually true or is it one of those things that doesnt matter much in practice. also curious if mixing polarization between transmitter and receiver side is actually hurting me or if diversity sort of compensates for that.

yeah mixing polarization is definitely hurting you and diversity doesnt really compensate for it in the way you might think ? diversity is choosing between two receiver inputs not correcting for a polarity mismatch. if your vtx antenna is RHCP and your goggle antennas are linear youre losing a noticeable chunk of signal just from that mismatch alone, somewhere around 3db which sounds small but in practice at 400-500m in a field with some multipath it can absolutely cause the breakup you're seeing.

the pagoda vs lollipop thing is sort of real but overstated honestly. a quality lollipop like a genuine foxeer or team blacksheep one will perform comparably to a pagoda at typical freestyle or even moderate long range distances. the real issue is probably the amazon knockoff situation you mentioned ? ive seen clone antennas that test completely wrong, like wrong polarization, wrong frequency tuning, just garbage. id start by getting a known-good antenna on the vtx side before spending money on anything else.

recon v3 with stock antennas is probably the actual problem here, those stock antennas are not great and for long range you really want a directional patch on one receiver and a quality omni on the other. the rapidfire module is good but it cant do much if the antennas feeding it are mediocre.

also 600mw on a 7 inch at 400m line of sight should be totally fine signal wise so yeah something else is off. id look at the vtx connector too, ive had a loose u.fl connector cause exactly the kind of intermittent loss youre describing and it drove me insane for like three flights before i actually pushed it in properly and it just went away