Decided to start expanding my horizons and stretch my wings.
Dropped a whopping $28 on what is called a Windsurfer.
Basically it's a reflector for a drone controller's antennas. Instead of broadcasting the RF signal in a 360° swath, it helps 'beam' the signal to more of one direction. The other half helps 'collect' the signal from the bird, much like your satellite dish.
With my new Phantom 3 Pro, I go out 2,000 feet and I'm down to 3 (out of 5) bars for a signal. Yesterday, I tried this puppy out and went a mile and half out and I
still had 5 bars.
I would have gone further but I was approaching some really tall high-voltage lines, and I've heard the electromagnetic field around them can mess with a drone's feeble signals. As I'm not too keen on losing a $1250 drone after just 3 weeks, I turned around and flew home.