How precise is the HYFIX H1P heading?
Heading error sounds small in degrees, so here is what it means. Fly a drone 500 m on a heading that is off by 2°, which is easy to get from a magnetic compass near motors and wiring, and you end up about 17 m to the side of where you aimed. At 0.2°, it's about 1.7 m.
We tested the H1P next to two other leading dual-antenna GNSS receivers. Each was stationary and compared with a reference: the average heading measured with antennas 2 m apart.
With antennas 1 m apart, H1P's typical heading error was 0.18°, about 1.6 m of sideways offset over 500 m. At 50 cm spacing it was 0.27°, about 2.4 m. H1P sits in the same class as the other receivers we tested. At 20 cm spacing every receiver widens to around 1°, because a shorter baseline turns the same measurement noise into a bigger angle.
Why it matters: a compass points to magnetic north, and anything magnetic nearby can pull it away. Dual-antenna GNSS heading doesn't use the magnetic field at all. It's measured from the satellites, it's already true north, and it works while the drone sits still.
The plot shows each receiver's heading spread around the reference direction. A narrower arc means steadier heading.
@HyfixAI H1P now tracks Xona PULSAR X1 and X5 signals live.
Xona's satellites orbit about 520 km up, far closer than GPS, so their signals arrive much stronger. In a live, clear-sky pass on 27 September 2026, the H1P tracked Xona for about 5 minutes and measured:
Mean signal: X5 52.8 dB-Hz and X1 49.7 dB-Hz (peaks 62.6 and 58.1)
Both are about 7x stronger than the matching GPS signal on average (+8.6 dB), and up to about 90x (+20 dB) at the best moment
Above 40 dB-Hz for 94% (X1) and 97% (X5) of the pass
Doppler swings smoothly from +33 kHz to −37 kHz, the signature of a fast-moving LEO satellite
Why it matters: a stronger signal is easier to keep where GPS struggles, such as city streets and under trees, and it tends to be harder to jam. Each +10 dB is 10x more signal power to spare.
The plot shows C/N0 (top) and Doppler (bottom) for X1 and X5 through the pass. The grey lines are the GPS L1 (solid) and L5 (dashed) average from the same recording, with the shaded band marking the min–max across the five satellites that have both bands.
