I am still finding my feet with this but I’ve come a very long way in a short time !! I’ve tried to avoid asking all the question about Gain and such like. I have trawled through endless topics on here about getting the best results and using Graphs 1090.
my set up is 1090 antenna > uputronics LNA > Blue flight stick pro plus
I’m changing to the orange stick as i understand i have 2 filters in the setup and losing signal !
My Question is is there any ball park figures in mind to aim for ??
current gain at 30
I have my weakest signal around -30 and less than 5% of strong signals.
my location isn’t near any airports
I would apricate your views on my screen shots of 1090 graphs
I have this setup running once in a while without issues having two filters. As i understand correctly, the filter in the blue stick is not placed optimal in the signal chain. So an additional LNA always helps.
You can do some try&error with different gain settings. Depending on your location you should aim to a max of 5% Messages > -3dBFS (what you did already).
Maybe you are already well optimized.
One next step could be the replacement of the FA stick with an Airspy device (cost intensive). You also have to respect your terrain limit.
I think i saw that post, I already have the orange stick on the way so will try and compare the two.
I have been up and down with the gain and seem to have found a happy setting and like you said i may well be optimized already but i still think there is to much red on the top graph ??
You’re a bit further North than me and by way of comparison I am currently using the AirNav FlightStick (although I would like to compare my FA Blue Pro Stick - with & without dark blue 1090 filter and Airspy with Kuhne 1090 LNA when I finally get round to it) and I recently reduced my gain from 60 where 14-15% of my messages were >3dBFS down to 42.1 where it now gives 0.5% >3dBFS so it might even be possible to increase it up a bit more.
My range is similar to yours but appears to see more messages per/sec (1800) and also a more aircraft (319/269) on screen?
Like you I have read many hundreds of posts on here I’m on a quest to optimize my station but for me it is a steep learning curve tempered by not wanting to mess too much with something that appears to be working fine as is. The thought of messing things up have definitely kept my experimentation to a minimum so far!
It’s an interesting hobby and I’ll be following your thread with interest…good luck!
Steep learning curve indeed !!! I had only heard of raspberry pi’s in passing and now i own one and doing things with Putty and VNC that i never thought i would know how. Have you looked at VRS i find it much more easy to look at ? I have spent time with that and only the other day got the flags to work so i get a nice little picture of the plane in the list on right. as like in the picture above i posted.
Well I first got into VR back in 2008 with my RadarBox but after butting heads with AirNav lost interest although I always wanted a device sat on my network instead of being tied to a USB port on a PC.
When I wanted to get back into VR I initially ordered an XRange but sent it back as I had no access to a device I paid for sitting on my network! Couldn’t even set a static IP address without asking AirNav to do it for me so I sent it back but not before opening the case to take a look inside. Found a lowly specced RPi 3/FlightStick so figured I could do a lot better a lot cheaper. Bought my first RPi after seeing a friend using one to run Pi-hole, the second for VR and am now up to 6 and looking for another!
The VR Pi was initially setup as a RadarBox feeder and expanded to FR24, FA & ADSBExchange because I wanted to give something back to those sites I used. I did approach a few others who either seemed to have a dead community (OpenSky), not very helpful (Planefinder) or ignored me completely (Freedar)
I haven’t looked at VRS yet as I seem spoiled for choice what with those others I mentioned above and although I find the RadarBox PC app is good visually and has some great features it still has bugs which I was reporting back in 2008 plus some new ones added since which AN don’t seem interested in resolving.
Main choice of interface for me is iPhone/iPad again with those sites I mention above. I would love to feed PlanePlotter as I appreciate the work Bev & Co put into it and used to subscribe back in the day but they don’t seem to have any interest in iOS apps otherwise I would feed them also.
Have spent far too many hours playing Pi’s and seem to have forgotten more than I have learned but I do enjoy it and like you feel I have come a long way since those days when I figured I would have no use or couldn’t understand what the fuss was around a Raspberry Pi…
I have to disagree with you about Planefinder. I have contacted them several times and they (Mark) answered me within a few hours. You can contact them here: support@pinkfroot.com
I can only speak as I find @Dutchyb and I never said they didn’t reply…I said they weren’t very helpful although looking back at the exchange of emails in November 2020 I see Mark actually didn’t reply to my last email.
I was feeding RB24, FR24 and FA at that time he seemed to feel that, quote; “Unfortunately however we cannot accept your data using the current configuration.” which seemed odd as I have since added ADSBExchange to my current configuration without issues.
This has been set as non-profit project by several universities and government to improve efficiency and reliability.
It is still alive and now used on a daily basis.
The community looks indeed quiet, that’s the reason why feeders are leaving the project.
Beside that it works a bit different by sharing realtime data from your feed which can cause a lot of traffic. I’ve noticed that it’s around 1.5 GByte of data per day. That is more than other feeders in a month.
There are lots of controversal data regarding the commercial feeders making money with your data (except ADSBExchange).
But it’s still a decision i need to do. If i do not agree, i simply stop feeding. That’s it
I like the API from Opensky which is 100% open for feeders
I stopped feeding Opensky some time ago because tech support was unresponsive.
If you look at the Opensky coverage map the area near Tampa has little coverage.
I feed folowing sites, and I am very satisfied with all of them, and have no complaint whatsoever from any of these:
Flightaware
Planefinder
Flightradar24
Radarbox24
Adsbexchange
OpenSky
AdsbHub
I started feeding Planefinder, Flightradar24, and Radarbox24 in 2013 when I purchased my first DVB-T dongle. Initially I fed them from Windows PC.
In 2015 I Purchsed my first RPi, and switched feeding Planefinder & Flightradar24 from RPi. However Radarbox24 continued from Windows PC till up to 2017 as tey did not have RPi feeder client. In begeming of 2018 they released their RPi client, and I started feeding them from RPi.
I also started feeding Fightaware since 2015 when I purchased my first RPi.
I am also feeding OpenSky, Adsbexchange, and AdsbHub for last several years.
I appreciate I’m in a busy area but I’ve been keeping an eye on my Pi, it currently uploads around 20Gb of data per day! I actually forget everything I feed to but it’s definitely FA, FR24, Planefinder, Radarbox and ADSBx. I was feeding to OpenSky but I switched that off a while ago, I don’t remember why. I might do the same with Radarbox.
Since I have a high-speed home internet with unlimited usage , I dont bother about how many GB per day I am uploading to these aircraft tracking sites. I never tried to measure it.
Yup, looks like it. I thought I’d denied access to the aircraft.json file through lighttpd.conf but it appears I’d taken that block off.
Oh, I remember why - It was because with the block on, I couldn’t use the openADSB app when outside my network to watch my own data. That’s not really an issue any more.
