Hi
Just want to know if 19 ft of antenna pole mater, I have a range of 100 to 150 nm and want to know if using this 19 ft pole will increase my range. Right now antenna is located in the roof in an urban area.
Thanks for your comments
Thanks, started reading and searching the forum 
1 Like
19 feet can help, but don’t expect miracles.
Follow the link to heywhatsthat and check your max. range on different antenna elevation levels
For a significant impact you would need to go much higher.
I’ve tried that on heywhatsthat with different elevations up to 10 Meter (30ft) without seeing a real improvement
The only thing where it can help if you e.g. can get rid of a building or tree with raising the antenna
This can help: GitHub - wiedehopf/tar1090: Provides an improved webinterface for use with ADS-B decoders readsb / dump1090-fa
But it boils down to this: If the your view of the horizon is less obstructed close by when going 19 ft higher, the mast will help.
So if it’s already at the highest point in a 500 m or so radius, the mast won’t make much difference if it’s already overlooking your own roof.
Does that make sense?
1 Like
Do some experimenting. Put your antenna on something like a 10 foot piece of PVC pipe. Schedule 40 PVC conduit is pretty ridged and easy to handle. If it’s too much trouble to remove your antenna from its current mounting, then you can make a 1090 MHz ‘spider’ antenna and use that. Temporally mount your 10 foot mast on your roof maybe against a chimney for support. Run your receiver and see how much improvement you get.
I live in a typical residential neighborhood at 840 feet above sea level. There are many tall trees around me. My antenna used to be 3 ½ feet above my roofline (single story house). I was receiving an average of 85-90 aircraft to a distance of 100+nm. I just moved it up and it is now 9 feet above my roofline. I receive about 120-140 aircraft and out to 150+nm. My furthest was 220nm and my highest count was 165 aircraft. Granted, I do live in northern CA but I still got good improvement raising the antenna. I plan to go even higher soon.
As the operating frequency of the flight telemetry is 1ghz and pretty much line of sight, you won’t see much difference in aircraft flying at +/- 30k feet. Just my opinion and experience in changing my antenna height.
It’s very much location dependant. I saw a huge increase simply by raising my aerial by 7ft.
That’s actually a very sensible suggestion.
Assuming your roof is about the same height as those around you, then just getting your antenna out in the open (above roof line) will show an improvement.
If adding 19 ft gets it above local obstacles (trees, buildings etc.), you’ll like the result.
I went from 25 feet to 50 feet. my range is 250+
without the details about your environment there is not much we can read from that.
Did you compare before and after the heywhatsthat values?
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.