Hi all. New to the community so appologies if this has been covered before. I have a current setup running on a Rasperry Pi One with an internal antenna with a magnetic base that I managed to mount outside on the side of the garage to get a bit of elevation and the Pi located in the garage loft. Originally I was getting up to 170NM of range in certain directions, but the rig is now over 3 years old, the antenna is a bit corroded and range has dropped.
I am in the process of upgrading and have bought a FlightAware pro receiver, a 8.5dBi colinnear antenna, 4m of LMR400 coax and a 6ft 2" pole to mount the antenna as high as possible.
I have tested this setup in the house and got pretty much no aircraft other than one or two, and I am wondering if this type of antenna require earthing to sort things out or whether it should just “work” straight out of the box.
I wouldn’t place much value on testing this new antenna in the house. Is your antenna mounting pole going to be metal or fiberglass or what? I would recommend you drive a 8 foot solid copper grounding rod in to the ground next to the base location of your antenna pole and ground connect the mast pipe if it’s metal to that ground rod with a heavy gauge wire and grounding clamps. Good grounds do matter!
I bought a cheap internal antenna to make sure the FA plus was working and then looked at the LMR400 cable and realised it was a female not a male, whihch confused me as it has the scre on fitting for the dongle but not the pin. No wonder it wasn’t working to well!
I was considering putting a ground spike in and connecting the lightning suppressor to it, but not entirely sure how i’m going to get an 8ft ground spike into the ground !
