FlightAware Pro Stick, revolutionary USB ADS-B/MLAT receiver

Flightaware staff,
Is this a 50 ohm or 75 ohm receiver?

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.

[quote=“BartJr”]

The prostick current draw is 300mA.

The Nooelec one is 280mA and the FlightAware Pro Stick is 300mA. We’re updating the specs – not sure where 150 came from but it’s wrong.

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.

Just relaying what I’ve read over and over again on multiple sites for over a year now. To each his own.

Either way, it doesn’t pass power and my Mini-Circuits amp gets 12v and pulls around 465mA, so it wouldn’t work anyway.

Matt

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.

What’s the frequency range of the dongle? 978-1090?

Thanks

Thanks for the data table!
If I understand correctly, the data was collected using the small - 5.5 dB gain - antenna?

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?

Now if only someone had a cheap but yet good sma splitter on Amazon I would be all set after ordering one of these.

Yes. The small 5.5dB FA antenna.

It does not have a TXCO. I haven’t seen anything about frequency drift.
Reference: reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comment … _adsb_and/

BTW just noticed the nice PhotoShop job. :laughing:
Thought something was off being the “Pro” in this picture has an MCX connector coming off the side.


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?

Good eye jprochazka… I thought that photo meant it has both SMA and MCX connectors! I guess it’s SMA only then.

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Busted and guilty as charged. :slight_smile: We’ll have a new photo on Monday. We lost the nice Pi case and ordered another one.

The real pro stick has the SMA on the end. All the other product pics are accurate and I just took one below to provide more scale/angles.

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.