You wrote you have a filter?
Try it.
Or are you already using it?
Feel free to take a picture of the setup.
I mean, if I saw anything out to 200 nm then it would blow my mind. As it stands, I’ve never gotten much beyond 50 - even at the old location with the metal roof.
Yes, I’ve had the filter attached for a couple of years now. Antenna to filter to FA stick to Pi. Here’s a photo from the move this past weekend:
The white component is a wifi bridge. Yup, I guess I left that out. The Pi has always been connected to it, but at the old location was located several feet from it. In the new location, this isn’t possible, so we bundled everything together and mounted it just below the roof overhang.
I guess this could be a source of interference?
But RF noise is RF noise. You can’t expect to hear a concerto from across the room if you have AC/DC blasting next to your head!
Have you installed @wiedehopf’s Graphs1090 add-on yet? It can be very helpful in providing information to help understand what is going on in your environment.
That is a truly baron aircraft environment out to 200nm. Hard to imagine the air traffic in that region could be that sparse.
This is my view at 6:20pm during off peak traffic.
Oh for sure, especially with Seattle and Vancouver, BC up there - not to mention north/south traffic to my west to/from SFO, LAX, etc. This is very much tied to issues with my setup.
Incredibly impressive map, btw!
That’s an impressive number of aircraft out to 200 nm. How many aircraft with positions do you see at peak. As I recall, you have an outside antenna, correct?
I have an attic antenna and only see most aircraft out to 120 nm, although max range is about 240 nm.
KPDX (Portland Int. Airport) is not baron. See the attached screenshot of https://globe.adsbexchange.com/
The red arrow points to KPDX
Here’s what I am seeing near PDX at nearly 9pm on a Wednesday. It will pick up slightly in about an hour and then drop off until around 6am.
During the day I hover between 60-90ish active aircraft at any given time.
What you’re showing is what I was thinking it would be. I was referring politely to what his view of the area was showing.
Yes Jim my Vinnant antenna is outside 35 feet above the ground and above the peak of my single story house. I am consistently logging aircraft out to 200nm for a full 360 degree pattern. On most fair weather days, during the mid morning peak, I am tracking 300 to 400 aircraft.
Very possible that it’s just worse signal now that you removed the groundplane.
Or limited view caused by the roof itself / trees.
Or an issue with solar panel inverter close by causing issues.
It’s really hard to say what the specific issue is.
You stated that the previous install spot on a metal roof was working better.
How far away was that, how high in regards to other buildings?
https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/three-easy-diy-antennas-for-beginners/16348
It was working better in the sense that I was getting more positions (adjusting the gain has improved this in the new location). The old and new locations are less than a half mile apart.
However, my poor range has always been like this, and I’m pretty sure the starting point for improving that is a better antenna. That’s the one thing that almost everyone has pointed out in this thread.
Try this DIY antenna.
It performs mich better than the magnetic base whip you have, and it is easy to make.
QUICK SPIDER - No Soldering, No Connector
Is your gain setting a fixed full time gain setting or is it part of a auto-gain self adjusting scenario?
I’m running a hard fixed gain setting of 48. No external filter or amplifier. Antenna coax directly to FA blue dongle to RPi4 B.
Busy Sunday morning in the Sunshine State. 324 Aircraft in the track. Notice there is a air balloon just beyond the 200 nm line in the Northeast.
Shizam! That sure tops your Avg Max Range of 6.0. Must have been a bonus round.
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In /etc/default/dump1090-fa you can set a limit on range:
# Maximum range, in NM. Positions more distant than this are ignored. No limit if not set.
MAX_RANGE=360
Can a similar limit be set in /etc/default/dump978-fa
Edit to add:
I see from dump978-fa --help , there’s no option to set a maximum range. So I guess the answer is no.
Gotta put a limit in the 978 data collection, seems more problematic than with 1090.
The range graphs were limited to 590 nmi in general but that didn’t work for some rare stations that have tropo up to 900 nmi 
Edit: Yeah can you run the graphs1090 install and see if it’s still working properly for 978? Limited to 350 nmi now for 978 range. (not aware of any super long range 978 tropo)
Ok, installed the new graphs1090 update and it seems to be running fine. Thanks for the update.
We don’t seem to have the extreme tropo conditions in the US that you see in Europe. At least I have never seen it.