Is that Signal Plus antenna better than the FA one? I kinda figured the FA one was as good as it gets for outdoor antenna, but bigger is usually better with Antennas… right?
There is also the Nooelec at 66" hmmm should try one and see if I get more than 160 ac and 800m/s
Yes it is about twice as long as the FA one and has better gain. My FA one could go to the horizon and the Signal one can also but it has a better RSSI on planes that far out.
I decided id try out the Nooelec 60" one! well see how it does, if its no bueno, then ill return it and get the SignalPlus
Im hoping maybe the better antenna will allow me to hit more of the ground planes in the 3 major airports near me, while not losing the qty and range I already have. It’s pretty flat here at the coast so Im hoping a little more height and gain will help. Then I can re-run the gain optimizer!
I can currently hit ground planes at 5 airports all in the phoenix metro area or in the 50 mile diameter circle.
One of the things i liked about the Signal Plus one was it was both 1090 and 978 and more gain than the FA one. I will see if I can go hold up the FA one next to it tomorrow and take a picture so you can see the difference.
However I must say while the antenna is super important the next most important thing is the cable. Make sure you have a really good cable as it helps a lot for those bouncing low power ground signals.
Here is a pic showing a bunch of planes around 5ish airports and on ground at some of the airports
Deer Valley North
Sky Harbor middle
Falcon East
Chandler South East
Luke Air-force West
Oh yea. I’ve got this massive cable that gave me a 50% increase over another good cable. Was like $75 but worth it!! Proxicast 36 ft SMA Male to N Male Premium 240 Series Low-Loss Coax Cable (50 Ohm) for 4G LTE, 5G Modems/Routers, Ham, ADS-B, GPS to Antenna or Surge Arrester Use (Not for TV or WiFi) (ANT-140-020-36) Amazon.com
I actually have that same cable also before I switched to a shorter one. It is a good cable for the length.
Any alternatives to this in the UK as from what I can see the signalplus is only on sale in North America
I currently have the Radarbox Antenna
Maybe have a look here
I have seen this one before, but I note it’s 5.5dBi compared to 12dBi on the signalplus one
Running into an issue with my pi version, ran fine on 2 spiral Linux feeders, but this is a ras pi 3…
Ah, so apparently Python is space sensitive. I had removed the comment but not deleted the space.
now I get :
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo python3 gain_check_v3.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “gain_check_v3.py”, line 4, in
from beautifultable import BeautifulTable
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/beautifultable/init.py”, line 5, in
from .beautifultable import ( # noqa F401
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/beautifultable/beautifultable.py”, line 46, in
from .helpers import (
File “/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/beautifultable/helpers.py”, line 293
raise Warning(f"Column header is not provided or invalid")
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
Same error here on a Pi3B with 8.2 SD image (upgraded from 7.1).
looks like you figured it out good job. I will in the next update remove those spaces from commented lines that may be uncommented so that stops tripping people up. Sorry you had issues.
I hope you are enjoying the results please tell me if they are giving you any insights to your setups that you had not had before.
be sure you are not leaving spaces in uncommented lines as python cares about tabs and spaces a lot.
if that is not the issue be sure that you have python 3 installed and pip installed beautifultable
I cant speak for Phodge, but I made Sure to only edit the location address and comment / remove comment to make it work for piaware SD. I had no issues with raperian OS. python and beautiful table, both installed.
Ok thanks for the help
ive nearly sorted corrections
just gain settings new / not / old
File “/root/gain_check_v3.py”, line 213, in
gain_choice = gains_01_21
NameError: name ‘gains_01_21’ is not defined
I am a little lost now
it does state you must not changed these settings lol
Anyway I can modify (or have the option to modify) the distances? I’m interested in really close distances and I don’t really pick up anything over 200 nm. Looking at 0-5, 0-10, 0-20, and 0-50. That would grab the aircraft at some of the closest airports to me and potentially adjust the gain for those appropriately.
Otherwise, works great for me, and as is, provides some good starting points for adjusting the gain. Thanks!
I will see what I can do to make this configurable
ok so you have a few issues here:
-
pass_number = a single number of how many times to go around the gains so it has to be like the following:
a. pass_number = 1
b. or
c. pass_number = 5 -
if you want to use the gains from gains_all_21 aka the green gains only you need to set gain_choice like the following:
a. gain_choice = gains_all_21
b. there is no reason to comment out the other gains_variables as the choice is made when you set gain_choice to the variable you want.
therefore your settings would look like
pass_number = 5
gain_choice = gains_all_21