How to replace a damaged antenna - POWERUP 4.0

WARNING: Dismantling the POWERUP is done at your own risk. Short circuiting the battery may cause fire and harm to you or your surroundings. A product which has been dismantled by a customer will lose it's 1 year warranty.

One of the main reasons causing damage to your antenna is flying over a hard scuffy surface like tarmak. In the event that the plane lands in an inverted position the antenna may get scraped and eventually chopped off. We have made some improvements to canopy providing 2 small guards for reducing the risk of scraping the wire off. This change was implemented during spring 2021.

Before you start... first verify if the antenna is defective thus impacting your flight range. A simple method to verify this is to connect the module to the app and place the module within 1 foot of the phone and look at the dB number on the upper left side, see image below:

If the figure is above -60 dB  (for example -65dB) this could indicate that your antenna has a problem. 

Step 1:

Cut a new antenna: the dimension of the antenna replacement is critical since this defines the wavelength. You will need a thin insulated wire which you can find in any electronics or hardware store or even at home in your wire junk pile, this could be a used USB wire which can be broken down to the single small wires. The required thickness is 0.5mm and exactly length of 33 mm

Step 2:

Remove 1mm of the insulation wire from one edge and tin with a solder gun.

Stem 3: (you will need a small phillips screw driver)

Remove the bottom Clips by unscrewing 2 screws which are located inside the bottom clips.

Step 4:

Remove the canopy by unscrewing 4 tiny screws which connect the canopy to the main body.

Step 5:

Carefully pull out the PCB and battery and unmount the PCB and wire from the canopy (Warning! do not short circuit the battery)

Step 6:

Using a soldering iron, carefully desolder the damaged antenna and pull it out from the soldering hole in the pcb.

Step 7:

Solder the new antenna wire in the same location, be sure to solder the antenna in the through hole of the PCB and be carfull not to accidentally damage any of the other components on the PCB while soldering.

Remount and fasten in the reverse order described above.

Test the dB parameters using the app as described above.

Happy flying!