Yo this is a sick mod! Just out of curiosity, how toasty did your AC56 become? I personally didn’t need a heat sink of considering many hours of use in the hot summer perhaps it’s a good idea
Probably not needed, but I added it for sure.It is the same at zero 2W. Removed from VtX eachine 1600mW 5.8GHz, where it was replaced by another heatsink.
This is how I directly soldered two coax cables to it.
BTW if you desolder the big SMA connector, you should put two big blobs of solder on the in and out pit of it. They must bridge between the case and the pin, so if you heat the case with the soldering iron, you also melt the solder of the pin. Failing to do so will most likely result in ripped off pad like here:
The PCB is cut with an angle grinder. Be extremely careful when scratching the isolation off the little trace of the second antenna of you scratch off the trace itself. Soldering to this then is the hardest part imho.
Here you see how I did my quick and easy DIY antennas.
Since the AC56 unit boots up with the 5180Mhz setting from stock, I built the antenna for this freq. An internet calculator said the dipole leg should be 13.8 mm. So:
- I cut the outer Isolation of the Coax cable about 20mm and then pushed back the ground mesh of it to fold back (!!!) over the rest of the cable. (Mesh widens when pushed, but also shortens, so cut long enought!)
- then I tinned the mesh (prevent it from opening) and cut it to 13.8 mm with a small wire cutter.
- Cut middle wire to 13.8 mm
- then I covered the open mesh with heat shrink so I don’t short stuff out accidentally.
Disclaimer:
- just benchtested it, no real test or comparison with stock antennas.
- 13.8 must not be the ideal lenght. Will maybe test with an VNA in the future
- no idea what wire type this is, was on an 2.4 GHz Antenna that i got laying around. Other wires might not work so well. Just try.