[hornychz]

I have, finally, got my TX board completed (at least enough to do some testing) and I'm not too happy with the performance of the RF link between it and the RX. I'm hoping someone can give me some suggestions as to where I may have gone wrong or how to improve things. I have the TX board temporarily on a breadboard that has a 12V power supply. I'm using a small black antenna screwed directly to the SMA connector on the board.

If I have the TX and RX in same room about 2 meters apart, things seem to work great. I get about 98 or 99 % RF efficiency.
If I move the TX to another room about 8-10 meters away the efficiency drops to about 25%
If I move the TX outside to approximately where I want to mount the TX, about 16-20 meter away from the RX, the efficiency drops to about 14% and I can see the 'outside temperature' disappears on the RX at times. This was only a short test (about an hour) because it's not in a weather proof box and it was going to rain.

Hello Gord,

could you post some photos of your construction - the both ends? I am mainly interested in the size and type of antennas (ideally where you bought them) and the mutual position of the antennas towards each other. It's also important - aren't you or anyone around you using other devices operating in the same frequency band? (Devices should not interfere, but sometimes someone violates regulations.)

Good luck.