I provided production for a band last weekend for an outdoor show located at a large sports complex. My usual setup is the Mackie DL32R, with an iPad Air, which has always been completely reliable. Sound check and start of the first set went fine, but all of a sudden, my iPad starting losing connection with the router, and freezing up. I had to move very close to the router before it would reconnect again. But when I moved back to the mix position out front, it would disconnect again. A couple times, I had to disconnect the router and plug it back in again to reconnect the iPad.
Fortunately, the mix kept right on going at the last settings, so there was no disruption to the show. I was running at 5G, so I switched over to 2.4 to see if that would solve the problem. No luck. My other tech that works with me pointed out that someone was flying one of those civilian drones nearby, so I started to wonder if that was causing my problems. After a while, I no longer saw the drone flying around, and it seemed like at that point, my connection became stable and my normal long range signal returned. I had no further issues the rest of the way.
The next day, I started doing an internet search, and sure enough, it turns out these drones use both the 2.4 and 5G bands for controllers and any on-board camera. So my theory is, the drone was jamming or overpowering my router's signal. I'm also thinking that these things must use very high power signals, since the drone can fly hundreds or maybe thousands of feet away.
This was the weirdest problem I've ever encountered so far using the DL32R. Wondering if anyone else has encountered anything like this? Hopefully, this was just a freak occurrence, but given that these drones are becoming more popular, I would think we might see more of them flying around outdoor festivals. I sure hope I don't see any more of these flying around any future shows that I do, lol.