Adjust gain for on-airport coverage

[aprosser]

I just installed a complete setup Rasp Pi from ebay with an orange prostick and a flighaware 978+1090 bandpass filter. I have an external antenna mounted on top of my hangar here at JKA, so I should have nearly unrestricted line-of-sight coverage of the field.

While the entire intent was to provide at or near surface coverage locally so my family can see me on taxi-out or taxi-in, I get virtually zero aircraft within 5 miles of the reciever.

I have 3 questions if anyone could help.

1. How can I improve reception within 5 miles of the antenna

2. What is needed to add 978/UAT coverage?

3. Is there any benefit to the “enterprise” account, it appears I need to further upgrade my account to achieve what I intended, which was to depict my aircraft taxiing out for takeoff or taxi-in after landing.

Thanks!

[foxhunter]

@aprosser

Is there any benefit to the “enterprise” account, it appears I need to further upgrade my account to achieve what I intended, which was to depict my aircraft taxiing out for takeoff or taxi-in after landing.

As a feeder you should have an Enterprise account already:

@aprosser

How can I improve reception within 5 miles of the antenna

Adjust the gain. If you’re very close, you might need to reduce it.

@aprosser

• What is needed to add 978/UAT coverage?

A seperate stick covering this frequency, potentially also an additional filter for it

[obj]

@aprosser

depict my aircraft taxiing out for takeoff or taxi-in after landing.

If you’re talking about a purely local view, your local SkyAware page shows everything you receive.

[wiedehopf]

@aprosser

• What is needed to add 978/UAT coverage?

You need a 2nd SDR.

How to Install and Configure Piaware 5.0 SD card image - Quickstart Guide

@aprosser

• How can I improve reception within 5 miles of the antenna

Try a gain of 25, maybe go down to 20, you can even try 15.
(It’s normal to lose some range, that can’t be avoided if you want good close in coverage)
For Beginners - How to Set / Change Gain

@aprosser

While the entire intent was to provide at or near surface coverage locally so my family can see me on taxi-out or taxi-in, I get virtually zero aircraft within 5 miles of the reciever.

I’m not sure if FA displays traffic taxiing on the ground on the global map.
There are other tracking sites which do:

• FR24 limits it to after and before a scheduled flight i believe so that will likely not work for you
• adsbexchange displays all aircraft on ground all the time if they have their transponder on and are being received so that would work
• Don’t know how planefinder and airnav handle it

[SoNic67]

Local ground traffic on local web page:

[aprosser]

Thanks!

I tried a few gain settings and settled on 23.

Now I just need to acquire the 978 equipment so I can see who causes all the go-arounds!