You’re welcome to believe whatever you wish, but keep in mind most “power issues” are not due to excessive draw from the dongle. Unless FA updates the power draw data, I’m going to assume it’s correct. Considering they are the authority on their product, I’m going to give them their due respect. At this time, no one else has this hardware.
In addition to what david.baker said: make sure you use a proper splitter with good isolation. The dongles tend to feed quite a bit of noise (local oscillator leakage etc) back to the antenna input.
All R820T2 radio chips are 75ohms. There is no way around this unless they redo that chip. The input for the prostick is 50ohms which is then fed into the amplifier which is then fed into the 75 ohm radio chip.
Nifty! Convenient that my cheapo LNA bit the big one this week.
Question that was posed but not quite answered - **does this have a TXCO? Is there data on the frequency drift tolerances?
**
… I mean - I already ordered one, so I guess the proof will be in the pudding. Looking forward to comparing it to the RTL-SDR TXCO dongle currently installed.
How about mounting this dongle on the antenna just below the filter, instead of coax you can run an active USB, no coax losses. Will it fit inside the metal RTL-SDR case or is it a different profile?
Do you mean that the front end chip (RF Amplifier chip) has an input impedance of 50 ohms & output impedance of 75 ohms, feeding 75 ohms input of R820T2 Tuner chip?
Looks good waiting patiently for mine to get shipped to try it out.
One less adapter to have between the filter and dongle being it is SMA and not MCX.
We are using the same radio chip as the other RTL dongles. You will be able to see both UAT and ADS-B frequencies.
Amplification can cause saturation of the transistors. If you are close to a strong signal it could overload the amplifier or radio.
This isn’t a problem for ADS-B /UAT since the signals are usually very weak.
We have planes flying a thousand feet from the FA antenna with prostick and saw close to saturation levels.
Still nothing to worry about blowing out the amplifier.
The FA filter is definitely good protection from any stray signals that might overload the prostick.
If you are watching a signal NOT on ADS-B / UAT you should be careful of the power level of the input signal.