Airspy Mini, Flightaware, and UAT 978MHz

Hello,
I am upgrading my ADS-B 1090 setup to an Airspy Mini.
I have been running Flightaware UAT and ADS-B setups for almost a year with Nooelect SDR’s and wanted to see an improvement with the Airspy Mini.
I have found Wiedehopf’s well laid out guide in setting up Flightaware 1090 with the Airspy mini using his script.
What I am unsure about is if I can use an Airspy Mini for my UAT 978MHz Flightaware RX setup using his script…is it the same script and a couple different settings or does the Airspy Mini currently only work on 1090 ADS-B?
I am using two separate Pi 4’s; one for UAT and and the other for ADS-B.
Thanks for any clarification.

I tried last year to get the airspy to work with dump978 with no luck. I’d be interested to see if anyone has managed to get it to work. If so, I will try again.

I believe I saw your post about this in my search to find whether or not the Mini could be used on 978MHz. It’s a real bummer if it can’t be.

Nope, but on the bright side, you can use an Orange FA receiver for Dump978 on the same Pi with an Airspy with 1090 and everything works fine if your airspy_adsb sample_rate is set to 12. That’s the easy way to combine your 1090 and 978 metrics in one FA site. Then you can use your spare Pi and Airspy mini for a new project like Airband!

And the Orange FA stick works well enough for 978. I’m sure Airspy could do better, but you’d be splitting hairs since most of us see 978 planes and message at a small fraction of the 1090 volume.

True. I have used Orange for 978 for about two years, and it proved very good. However due to strong cell phone and other RF signals in my area, I had to use a Flightaware filter with it.

I have purchased RadarBox 978 flightstick in special offer for Canadian$15 two years ago, and it was lying unused, so I decided to use it two months ago. It works fine, has a builtin LNA & 978 saw filter. However due to strong cell phone and other RF signals in my area, I had to use a Flightaware filter with it.

 

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Good point. I forgot to mention I have something in front of my Orange FA stick… Your way is cheaper probably just as good for UAT!

I’ve been running a NESDR Smartee V2’s on 978 and also on 1090 with the Uputronics 978 and 1090 LNA’s since I put my setup together. I was just hoping to try out the Mini on both to see if they made a big difference.

Saying AirNav gear is just as good as anything made by uputronics … blasphemy in my eyes :slight_smile:

Use the airspy mini for 1090, you won’t regret it!

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True on quality… but for UAT, for most locations in the US, what you can get isn’t much regardless of receiver. But I guess in the summer UAT GA traffic is 4 or 5x of MLAT aircraft count (100+/- UAT on good sunny days for me), unless you live near an MLAT-heavy military base. So I guess UAT is something…

Winter and rainy season in an above average GA aircraft US region
Aircraft

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So the synopsis is that the Airspy Mini will not work on UAT 978; correct?
Thank you

IIRC the problem with the Airspy is that it runs only at specific fixed sample rates, and the sample rate that dump978-fa requires is not one of them, and dump978-fa doesn’t implement a resampler to handle other sample rates.

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Even if AirSpy Mini works for UAT978, I will never spend $100 to receive less tha 10 UAT planes per day

https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/abcd567#stats-76000

 

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