(Un-) Fortunately today is a national holiday in Germany, maybe over the weekend (Saturday, as Sundays are off-days too ;))
Fun fact:
The public holiday today is called “Tag der Arbeit” (Labor day, original translation is “day of work”), but nobody is working. (except some farmers who don’t care about holidays).
My antenna took a delivery time of almost a week from Slovakia to Germany
It didn’t take much longer than that to get to me in Central Florida, USA
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Yes, but Central Florida is a little longer distance with a big pond in between compared to Germany 
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Gude!
The FA Pro Plus clone has finally found it’s way to my doorstep!
After running the heatmap scan this is my result (NESDR SMArt v5 w/out filter, NESDR SMArt v5 w/ filter & FA Pro+ Clone w/o filter):
Judging by the graphs alone - is there any merit in double filtering?
I’ll report back later today/in a few days (I’m impatient, definitely this evening…) with graph1090 results
Are you still waiting on the Vinnant antenna?
My Vinnant 1090/5-SU is up and running along the FA Pro Plus Clone!
Here are my graphs after installing readsb a few days ago (unfortunately I lost a few hours of stats due to a Pi restart):
The graph is basically split in 3 parts:
Nooelec SDR + FA dark blue filter & spider antenna
FA Pro Plus Clone w/o external filter & spider antenna
FA Pro Plus Clone w/o external filter & Vinnant COL 1090/5-SU
I’m a little "“concerned” for lack of better word that it seems like I’m losing both messages, aircraft and range with my new SDR - is readsbs autogain screwing with me here? @wiedehopf
Other than that, the improvement in messages and range with my new antenna is very apparent!
You don’t have to use it.
Its clear priority is to not lose signals from close by aircraft as the signal from them gets very strong.
I’m mainly wondering as to why I’m suddenly left with less messages/aircraft tracked
That’s not what the graphs look like.
So not sure what you’re talking about.
No worries, it’s a short part of my graphs where I was running just the Ali clone with my old spider - notice the little section around “Tue 9:00” up until “Tue 12:00” when I installed the Vinnant?
Could be the LNA getting overloaded by interference.
Different antennas will pick up a different amount.
Could be that you moved the old antenna when connecting the new SDR.
I’d also test if adding the FA dark blue filter is beneficial.
The LNA in the blue SDR is before the filter, so it can get overloaded by interference in some locations.
This is my scan with
Clone:
Clone w/ Dark Blue Filter:
Currently collecting data for graphs with the Clone + Filter running
Scans are … of limited use.
Just for comparrison, I changed a setup this afternoon so you can get an idea what different hardware can do for a location.
Old setup: Raspberry Pi 3B with a RTLSDR v3 Dongle (no filter no LNA in this device) and a generic Aliexpress 1090 Mhz antenna with 1 meter thin cable on the left side of the graphs and postion report .
Autogain and burstmode are enabled
New setup: Same Raspberry Pi 3B with a FA SDR dongle (LNA and filter included), external FA barrel filter, 3 meter H155 coax cable FA 1090 Mhz antenna on the right side of the graphs and position report.
Autogain and burstmode are enabled
Time of change 15:45 local time, I’m showing the 8 hr graph
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That’s one seriously positive change in performance.
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So, from your bottom line, what component provided the most improvement in your system setup?
The first change was using the clone without a filter along my old spider antenna - the very tiny section around Tuesday morning (note the loss in graph 2 & 3). I didn’t do too much testing in that configuration because my Vinnant showed up at my doorstep just a few hours later.
Around Tuesday 12:00 I was running the new antenna with the clone and without any external filtering (note the sharp increase in all graphs).
Wednesday morning I added my FA filter back and saw another increase basically across the board. Is that due to a bad gain setting? Who knows, but I think the external filter is necessary along with my clone.
Simply test it with different settings, leave them for at least one day and check it frequently.
Beside that Tuesday is for our region the day with the lowest traffic. It is increasing over the week with peaks on Friday and Sunday. And it also depends if it’s arrival/departure from/to west or east.
Once the wind direction changes you might get a significant change as well.
So also watch out the weather conditions while testing