Hi Guys,
I’ve recently brought a cheap dedicated ads-b receiver from China, not a fake copy one, but something that looks like it has tried to do it’s own thing… Is it ok if I was to post a quick review here, I know you guys sell your own equipment…
The flightaware.store do not sell/ship outside USA, so in my opinion, it wont affect their business, it will rather help a large number of non-US members.
Hi,
OK, here goes…
I saw one of these on Aliexpress a while back and as I was looking for something to replace an RTL-DSR v3 and wideband LNA that I was using on my secondary receiver, I got one on a whim when it was offered for £18…
To be honest wasn’t expecting a lot, the description was cobbled together from a standard TV stick listing, didn’t make any sense in the context of ADS-B, and it was plastered with buzz words, however since I’ve got it I’m quite pleasantly surprised.. It seems well made, metal can, that gets quite warm, so there appears to be an effort to drain the heat away inside…
Performance wise, a direct swap with the RTL SDR saw a reasonable jump in message rate, from about 650/sec to 850/sec average and a modest rise in distance, maybe 115 miles average to 125…
I ran a heat map to compare against my flightstick blue, and RTL SDR setup, while to my untrained eye the filtering does not seem to be of the same quality as the flightstick, there does seem to be some there..
Chinese dongle
RTL-SDR
Blue FlightStick
On ebay I’ve seen them for £35, certainly at that price I would get pay the extra and get the flightstick but if you can get one cheap they look like they would make quite a good dedicated secondary / backup device…
If anyone is interested I can post a couple of graph1090 images to compare what has gone on…
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I’ve got a couple of those as well, they are a decent replacement when stick fails, only downside I’ve experienced is that they don’t like to be placed behind a barrel filter and LNA.
Then the performance degrades quickly so I use them without those items.
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Regarding differences in performance between RTL-SDR dongles, in another thread i compared performance between several RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongles and found that you can get variations of 9% in messages. So it wouldn’t be surprising if you see that kind of difference between dongles from different manufacturers.
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I dont care if I get 10% reduction in performance if I get 50% reduction in cost of hardware 
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I get what you are saying, but, on my ‘better’ stations, I’ve put enough effort /expense into the antenna system alone, the cost difference of the receiver isn’t significant.
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Some interesting low-cost Choice (free shipping) ADSB items on Aliexpress.
No harm in browsing. 
Lot of items
https://www.aliexpress.com/ssr/300002636/ZDYcAtyTZf
I have just now ordered this antenna, the one without mounting clamps, as it is cheaper than the one with mounting clamp, and I dont need a mounting clamp as I will hang it with a string in a window.
Price Canadian $17.68 (US$12.45) + Free shipping (Choice category)
When received, will compare it with FA antenna (side by side in same window 30cm horizontal spacing), and post results.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010353597664.html
Hi,
Some graphs now it has been running a few days, the swap over was June 02 at about 6PM, prior to that it was a genuine RTL-SDR v3 with a genuine RTL wideband lna. No other config or hardware changes…
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It looks like a coaxial half wave dipole so hopefully it will be a few db down on the FA antenna which is twice the length and supposedly has more elements.
If you have one of the cheap PCB dipoles it would also be interesting to see the comparison.
Seems you are right. After seeing your post, I dug deeper into the seller’s listing, and could find it’s gain is 3dBi, while FA antenna’s gain is 5.5 dBi.
Following is the specification I could now dig out from seller’s listing:
Specification
Antenna long: 26cm
Direction: Omni Directional
Frequency range: 1090Mhz
Average Gain: 3dBi
VSWR ≤ 2.
Impedance: 50 Ohms
Antenna size(mm): 20*3000
Radome Body: Glass Fiber
Connector type: N-Male Plug connector
Lightning protection: DC grounding
Aliexpress Antenna Inner
Flightaware Antenna Inner
@MartinColeman
Yes there is a noticeable increase in number of messages and number of aircraft tracked since July 02, the date of swaping the dongle.
That is basically the bottom-line. I have 3 noolec 5. All different. Combine that with the hardware you connect it to (In my case RP5 vs PC). Things sum up.
When you compare results for successive days or even hours or minutes, there can be huge differences even with the same hardware. For example, around here, July 3 was a very heavy traffic day. On the other hand July 4 was a very low traffic day. Then around 7 to 9 PM on July 4, traffic went up --never saw an increase like that late in the day. No apparent reason for that, but I checked nearby sites and they saw the same increase. If you are in an area with a lot of nearby sites, those sites provide a good reference point when making comparisons.
Found another similar one, but longer (55cm vs 30cm) , higher gain (8dBi vs 3dBi), and costlier (C$46 vs C$17)
The 55cm 8dBi antenna C$46
The 30cm 3dBi antenna C$17
The 40cm 5.5dBi antenna C$30
Well aware of that, been collecting data for over 5 years now
I’m running two receivers at the same location here, so I have a pretty good reference system, I can post the graphs for the same period if you want, but that didn’t show the same increase as the tests system.
I’m fairly happy that I’ve seen an net improvement, this device is certainly way better than the generic TV dongle I used to use, and noticeably better (for me) than the RTL-SDR I had been trialling, I guess other peoples mileage will vary…
Pity they show stylized images rather than photos.
They look great but with the spacing of the elements as shown they probably don’t work.
These antennas use multiple sleeves, something like these:
Click on image to see Larger Size
Click Again to See Full Size
Click on image to see Larger Size
Click Again to See Full Size
If you have two receivers, would you mind also doing tests at 2.56 Msps?
And as always: Nice firstname! All the best
Martin