Liquid Rhino wrote:
Similar results here. I'm getting just about 90ft at 100% with the CST and about 75ft at 100% with the CC outside with no obstructions. Anything longer seems to be a toss-up if not outright miss. Line-of-sight really means line-of-sight tho, as I'm noticing any obstructions that aren't thin walls and such really play a part in blocking the signals. If I put the light behind a car/wall or walk around the corner of tof a buidling about 50-or-so odd feet away from the receiver, it won't trigger. (These results are with CSRB+/speedlights though, still waiting on my Big E's to ship)
I'm not knockin' it tho, for the price it does solve about 95% of any real-world scenario I've run into. Not to mention the CC's real easy to use & packed with features. I've also had the similar experience rangewise with some Elinchrom Skyports. If I need to ever rent PW's for silly-long ranges it'd be a rare occurrence anyway.
Far as the CC battery life goes, mine seems to be a mixed bag. Using 900mAh rechargeable NiMH's, the most I've used it in length was some solid test shooting I did the other day for like 3-4 hours and it's still ticking. When I first got it tho, a strange thing did happen - I put fresh batteries right out the box, toyed with it for a bit & threw it in a pocket of my backpack. Seems one of the buttons must've been kept 'pushed' by the other contents or walls of the bag, cuz the next morning it wouldn't turn on at all until i swapped cells.
I have never seen a CST fail to go 300' + line of sight. Same transceiver chip and 2.4GHz frequency as Skyport. In my tests, CST has slight edge over Skyport in range and a substantial edge in antenna orientation. Something really wrong if you're only getting 90' with either.
Lithium batteries beat all other in CC or CSRB+ in terms of life and reliability in cold weather. About $5 per pair.