Connection cutting out after a minute or two

Pi 4B GroundPi
Zero AirPi
RTL8812AU Adapter name BearExtender Turbo (verified, it is 8812au)
Zeus 722 FCC
Using for video, RC, and telemetry

I turn on the GroundPi and the AirPi, I get video and telemetry from the AirPi. After usually about a minute or two (sometimes lasts 20 seconds, sometimes 4 minutes), the connection dies. I get a black screen and whatever information was last sent (position telemetry, rssi, etc) just stays still. If I reboot the GroundPi, it works again, but goes out again after a minute. I tried powering them many different ways, tried reflashing sd cards, changed settings around, but still no luck. I have other issues with the setup such as the wifi hotspot not working (error message no wifi hotspot capable hardware found), USB tethering not working, and rc signals not transmitting. I will open separate topics for those issues if needed. I spent quite a bit of time trying to fix all these issues and I feel like it’s all because of something stupid I overlooked. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

In my case it was not enough power to the Raspberry. I am powering through the GPIO pins and found that I needed a full 3A power supply

How long are the wires your using to connect the WiFi adaptors to the Pi’s and are they standard wires or actual multi core shielded cables?

I found that even wires longer than 2" caused instability on the air side and even complete failure on the ground side if longer than 1" when using regular cables.

With wires shorter than 1" on the ground side going to a USB type c socket and then a 2m long USB c cable its fine, its got to be to do with the shielding and long exposed wires are letting interference screw up communication with the pi.

You problem might be different but that’s the cause of the problems I had and the symptoms were the same as yours with the working for a random period of time and them losing the link.

Thanks for the replies! I got it fixed now. I was using the usb 3.0 micro b type wire that came with the wifi adapter. Instead of using that, I just used a normal micro usb. I’m not sure if usb 3.0 makes a difference for openhd but I’m not seeing any performance differences so far. I’ve tested it for an hour or so without failure.

Other issues still remain so I will hopefully be able to get help for those as well.

USB 3 shouldn’t be a problem, it more likely a poor quality cable with thin wires and bad or no shielding.

I can’t get a taobao adaptor to work with individual silicone wires longer than roughly 1.5" but is absolutely fine with a 2m decent quality USB cable.

Its the pi that is fussy and not the WiFi device, my PC will work just fine with the taobao car connected with 2ft of individual 28awg silicone wires but the pi won’t recognise its even connected with cables like that.