RHCP & LHCP and why it matters

A short introduction

In order to establish a connection between your drone's video transmitter (VTX) and your goggles or monitor (VRX) you will need a set of matching antenna's. It might be quite a burden to choose the right antennae for your task. In this article I'm going to explain some basics which might be useful to make the right choice.

RHCP and LHCP, what do those abbreviations mean and what does it do?

It's pretty simple. RHCP stands for Right Hand Circular Polarized and LHCP for, you might have guessed it: Left Hand Circular Polarized.

Circular polarization means that the radiated signal will be transmitted in a circular pattern like the red line in the figure below. Because of this polarization you will be less susceptible multi path because the decreased possibility of the right reflection. Because of this your VRX will "discard" the received data. Linear polarized antennae, like the blue line in this figure are more prone to reflecting data which the VRX won't discard.

So, which one is better?

That's also a quite simple anwser, none is better. Both LHCP and RHCP should be equal in performance.

But... If you tend to fly with others the best choice would be to choose what they DONT use. Because if you buy whatever they don't use you are less likely to catch their signals which would result in "noise".

But make sure that receiving side and transmitting sides match. If you don't match, the range will not be very good and you will have alot of interference.