Drone Racing At Night With Shark Byte

Testing out Fat Shark's Shark Byte digital FPV system in a real world racing environment.

I've been flying my digital race quad for a couple of weeks now so I committed to sending it nervously through all the rounds at my club race to get a true feel if it's something I would commit to long term. I'm running two TrueRC singularities on the SB paired with HDO2 goggles. Rush cherry on the quad.

Two parts of the DVR. The first was one of the final races, 4 quads up, I was the only one running a SB system. The other 3 were on analog. Everyone on 25mW.

Second part was an earlier round with 5 pilots, 2 on Shark Byte and 3 on Analog. Again 25mW

You'll probably notice the 'congestion' with 5 up. Still totally flyable but I do get some of those complete 'Rainbow outs' flashing by. This was the absolute worst it got the entire night so I used that DVR for comparison.

Some further observations now I've had more time with the system. This is more nit-picking the negatives. No doubt it's superior to analog in almost all cases.

- I can see! haha.

- I can definitely tell when another quad is in the air. Even to the point when I'm near it, the digital noise increases a little. This is kind of a moot point though, happens with analog too.

- Analog is not immune to the horizontal lines. It's generally fine but occasionally they do come up. The general consensus from analog pilots was a non-issues having SB up however.

- LapRF 8 way picked up all my times. No missed laps the whole night. Was the same for my mate on SB.

- No durability issues so far. Same as any typical analog cam/vtx setup.

- I tried running a Foxeer 1.7mm lens from a predator 4. Made little difference to me, I ended up switching back the stock lens. Also had an IR issue with the predator one.

-Analog and DJI I fly in 4:3 I am much more comfortable in 16:9 with Shark Byte.

-I can switch between analog and SB quads without difficulty. Lap times are comparable right away.

-Interference from objects while on 25mW is TERRIBLE. Improves with higher power obviously but the complete 'rainbow outs' make me feel uneasy. Not sure if it's a sound choice for freestyle. Unless you fly open spaces exclusively? Not my focus anyway.

-I've tried changing every setting possible on the camera to improve overall clarity. Slight improvements but it's still very soft.

-There's no channel memory??? On power up it seems to default to Channel 1 every time. That's SUPER annoying if flying with other SB users, especially since there's no display name in the OSD.

-Changing settings via stick commands is too precise. Sticks needs to be at extremes and dead center to enter and scroll etc. The stick 'zone' needs to be relaxed a little I feel.

I still want to and am tending to love it. Stayed tuned.

Видео Drone Racing At Night With Shark Byte канала Scott Tomlinson