Amps

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

I have gotten everything working by reading all the great info here. There are quite a few very helpful people here who’s knowledge is off the charts.

I ended up going with the FA antenna and it filled in some of the dead spots I had with the ones I built. Now I’m looking into amps to get some more messages and distance out of it. Below is my setup to give an idea of what I am currently running. The FA antenna is about 15 feet off the ground give or take a foot.

I am currently running a Pi with the NooElec Mini2+ USB stick, MCX to F adaptor, about 6 feet of RG-6 triShield, ground block, 6 more feet of RG-6 triShield, F to N adaptor, and then the FA antenna.

The problem I am running into is the volume of amps out there to look at. There are a ton of the SAT ones and quite a few LNA ones. I enjoy soldering and building stuff, so if someone has a nice schematic of one, I’d love that even more.

Thanks ahead of time for any and all help.

2

First thing you want to do is establish the max range you can get. Use the sticky post on max range to determine.

You already have a near perfect setup. 12 ft of cable will have minimal loss and the ff antenna has a 5.5-6 dB gain. You could easily over amplify and loose close in reception.

3

Im right about where the max range says I should get. Figured with the amp I might pick up a few more positions on some of the planes I notice. DFW airport is about 50 miles away, so I pick up most of my planes going to or from there,

4

you did not write what dump1090 you are running and what settings you have there. anyway - nothing to solder - but often brings measurable more data:
→ give dump1090-mutability dev 1.15 a try
→ play a little with gain settings (built-in amp) there e.g. ‘agc’ instead ‘max’ and/or --enable-agc

to install dump1090 mutability it easy with mgunthers howto: http://discussions.flightaware.com/post177419.html#p177419

tom

p.s. my finding was when i went from 15 feet to just 1 feet (both very good low loss) cable - the difference was nearly unmeasurable. that’s why i never tried an amplifier …

5

I’m running dump1090-mut 1.15dev now, but just had it set as max. Thanks for the info on AGC, I’m going to look into it.

Chris

6

see ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/low-noise-amplifier-t35949.html for a schematic of a nice bias tee powered LNA.

7

Thanks for the info on AGC TomMuc. According to the Collectd graphs, my signal level is quite a bit more stable and a tad higher and the tracks seen has risen as well.

Thanks for the link mck1nney. I have some reading to do there.