FlightFeeder Orange Gain

[joncampbellpg]

I know there are a million threads on HOW to change various gain levels, before you move on…this isn’t that

I have the FlightFeeder Orange box provided by FlightAware, and on the touchscreen is an option for manually adjusting the gain. By default it’s set to max (approx 55) but the option is there to tune it down.

I know more gain isn’t always better but in what circumstances would you want to turn it down?

[abcd567]

There may be various reasons, but two main reasons are:

1. Presence of very strong ADSB signals due to antenna/receiver being very close to busy flight path(s) or busy airport.

2. Presence of strong interfering RF signals, mainly Cell/Mobile phone.

You can try different values of gain such as -10 (agc), max, 50, 45, 40, 35, 30 etc to find out which gain setting gives you best performance (plane count, message count, farthest distance you can see a plane etc).

To find the presence of Mobile/Cell phone signals, you can conduct an RF scan as detailed in following thread:

Do I Need A Filter?

NOTE: You cannot do this RF Scan in Orange. You will need a dvb-t or pro stick, and conduct it on Pi or Windows computer
.

[arush87]

I have two of them…see it’s very simple…if you are very near to airport or mobile towers…never tick the max gain option…use something lower value like 35/36. And use the filter given.

[SoNic67]

See here:

Messages per second / Visible Flight data / Status on FA Receiver

I have one of those orange FlightFeeder and also my own Pi. On both devices, I had to adjust the gain from the default AGC (-10 value) to something lower, because of the proximity with the airport. Lots of strong signals close-by will overload the receiver. In the “Radio” menu, you can see the number of “clipped” messages in the past minute (and more). You can lower that number, by adjusting the gain in there. Note that there is a software quirk there - once you have selected the new gain (tap…

[arush87]

Especially the AGC is very mysterious. It actually increases the sensitivity of receiver so does the possibility of detection of faint signals from far way. So if you are in a remote location, having a clear radio horizon with minimum interference,then range upto 300NM even 400NM is also possible too with orange receivers.

[joncampbellpg]

Thanks for the suggestions. I was seeing a lot of clipped messages and suspected gain had something to do with it. It don’t live in a busy area but there is a cell tower quite close and within LOS of the antenna so I dialed it down a bit and the clipped message count is Zero.