Hey guys, finally thinking about moving my antenna outside (been holding off due to the fact that I didn’t particularly feel like messing with all the grounding that comes with a proper install).
My plan is to put the Pi in a wall mounted (and weatherproof) box outside, running off of PoE from my main switch. Coax from the box to a mast mounted box for the HABAMP and FA filter, then ending up at the antenna.
I’m trying to figure out where I should put the antenna. I have a chimney but it’s not brick. It’s some sort of metal with a faux brick paint job. My initial plan was to get a chimney mount with a 4" standoff from the chimney, but I figure that would likely be an issue being so close to the (sheet metal/aluminum). The other option doesn’t give me quite as much elevation (a difference of maybe 10’) if I were to bolt a mount up to the sewer exhaust pipe and stand the antenna off of that (which seems to be a popular option for ham operators). I don’t particularly want to put the antenna on the chimney with a mount that raises the antenna past the chimney height, don’t need any more chance of catching lightning here.
so - back to reality. i had/have the similar problem - and my solution for now is an antenna in the attic. maybe in spring i’ll overcome my lazyness and mount it on the roof. my first idea was the same as yours - placing on the chimney. but i did some photoshop mockups a few weeks ago and decided that this looks extremely ugly. if/when mounting my antenna i’ll use a short pole (1-2 feet) very near to rooftop and with max distance from chimney.
edit: better place amp + filter + dongle + pi in the attic. 3-6 feet cable in front of amp costs nearly zero performance and helps much if there is something going wrong one day.
My only issue is with grounding. I’ve considered the gable mounts but the only gable that I have where I can mount it is on the far side of the house, which means a really long ground from the service ground.
I may just bite the bullet and put a ground on this side of the house, tie it in to the service ground and then ground the mount from there, but in Florida, I don’t want to risk catching some discharge and starting the house on fire. (Last year a tree about 300’ from my house got hit and split in two from lightning.
Russian Antenna Installation From Soviet Era:
USSR Army’s Very Low Level Flight Detecting Radar at Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Nick Named as “Russian Woodpecker”.
Reportedly Russians used to pump into this antenna array 10 Mega Watts of RF Power.
It consisted of a huge array of center-fed broad-band cage-dipoles.
The electronics in my house are likely worth more than the electronics plugged into those arrays. Having spent a couple years in the middle east, there are a lot of things that I have seen work, but wouldn’t come anywhere near doing myself.
This cluster of wires & cables is the 240V 50Hz AC Power Lines & Service Drops
Well in a war-torn country in middle east (like Iraq, Syria etc) this is not astonishing.
Make sure whatever you do to push the antenna above or away from the chimney as it will block a huge swath of LOS. I’d probably buy or build an offset mount kit for a satellite dish. Should get you all of the hardware you need.
If your faux brick chimney is indeed metal then attach the standoff to it with some sheet metal screws, right up under the screen. Put it on the side toward the roof peak. Use a short piece of metal or PVC pipe to get the antenna above the edge of the chimney top. If you use PVC, then do run a ground wire from the antenna base to the standoff, just for good engineering practice.
Unless you live on a hilltop and your neighbors regularly take lightning hits to the chimney, and your house is two or more stories taller than the surrounding structures, I wouldn’t worry about a tiny ADS-B antenna being 6 or 8 inches above the chimney on a side mount.
Amateur radio operators routinely put up much larger lighting bait than you are contemplating and never catch a thing…
