My main antenna is in the attic now I have power and ethernet up there.
I decided I wanted to attempt to get rid of as much coax as possible. The view being less/shorter/no cables resulting is less signal loss.
I bought a load of F-F couplers and went to work.
First attempt works well, message rate is up slightly - I was only using very short lengths of coax anyway, but this is a nice way to not have to bother screwing on F-connectors to coax cable. Quick and easy to unscrew and swap parts if needed.
Certainly not the tidiest setup, I do plan to make a stand of some sort instead of having it hanging.
RG6/U is only going to lose around 0.07dB per foot at 1090MHz. By the time you factor in the added boost from your amp at the base of the antenna, you could certainly get away with making use of some coax between the output of your amp and the SDR dongle and not have enough loss to even worry about. It would take 14ft-15ft of RG6/U for you to even lose 1dB, which isn’t enough loss to even chase down - especially after an amp.
Depending on the power added by that amp, my concern at this point would be over-driving the input on your SDR. How to you have Dump1090 setup to handle the input gain?
Screw-on F-connectors are garbage anyway. Compression crimp (with the plastic ring on the back) are the only way to go. If all you’ve got it screw-on, getting rid of as many of those as possible is never a bad idea.
I have compared both the following configurations:
(1) Cantenna + 15 ft / 5 m RG6 coax + 50 cm RG316 pigtail + DVB-T Dongle inserted directly into RPi (No Amplifier)
(2) Cantenna + 50 cm RG316 pigtail + DVB-T Dongle inserted directly into RPi (No Amplifier)
Did not find any noticeable difference in range or plane count.
