I have my Piaware running for about a week now and I think I am getting some good reception. I am getting over 500,000 position reports per day and about 2200 aircraft.
I am running my antenna in my attic. I am still tweaking the position a little bit but I got the antenna just about up to the inside ridge of my highest peak of my hip roof. This is about 22 feet up behind a tile roof. I know it would be even better outside but it is not happening right now. I am getting some readings up to around 250 imperial miles from this.
I am in South Florida and it is heating up. Yesterday my FA stats page gave me a warning that the Pi was getting hot. I have it in the standard Pi case with no ventilation, with two heatsinks, so I just ordered a case that has some vents and a fan so that should help.
Right now I have:
FA antenna to N male/F adapter to 2 ft generic RG6 cable to F/SMA M adapter to FA external filter to FA Pro Plus to Pi (WiFi)
I currently have a heavy duty extension cord powering the Pi but have the components for POE coming tomorrow and will go POE and turn off WiFi.
I’d like to get a few more feet of antenna cord to make it a little easier to work on, maybe 4 to 6 ft. Is the RG6 loss at 6ft significant? I am willing to do something else if it can less loss a little. What are best antenna cord options at this length? I am guessing having the least adapters etc. is best. I see a few N male to SMA M cords out there.
I’d also like to have a little box or shelf that I can hold the Pi and Pro Stick and filter on without restricting airflow that I can attach to a wood framing.
Usually a few dB loss between the antenna to the receiver is not going to do much.
RG6 has about 6.5dB / 100 feet. That means your 2ft has about .13dB of loss + connector losses.
Good quality connectors are usually less than 0.5dB of loss. So your cable is just about 1dB of total loss.
Going to 6 feet of cable will increase it by another 0.25 dB.
There are also some loss by using a 75ohms cable instead of a 50ohms but not much to worry about.
A rule of thumb is to stay below 3dB cable loss to keep your range drop from 0-10%. Around 5-6dB cable losses you will definitely see the large 30-40% reduction in range. It gets progressively worse after that.
Basically, any type of cable less than 10 feet will be have less than 3dB of loss.
Cables quality matters for anything above 10 feet.
Theoretical question.
There is possibility to lift Flightfeeder antenna to an altitude of 30 meters (height above sea level
400 meters).
But this is the location of the television antenna. It will be necessary to use an existing TV cable (75 Ohm).
At the top, it is necessary to sum the signals of the two antennas. And on the ground to separate the signals for Flightfeeder receiver and TV.
Within the line of sight Flighfeeder receives signals at a distance of more than 400 km. I assume that to compensate for losses it is necessary to install an LN amplifier near the antenna. What characteristics should such an LNA have? For example, does SPF5043z have the appropriate characteristics?
This LNA has too wide a band.
It uses the SPF5043z, which is a high performance pHEMT MMIC LNA designed for operation from 50MHz to 4000MHz.
It will amplify all VHF, UHF, TV, Cellular, and Satellite signals and overload the DVB-T (or Pro Stick), *unless you use a good 1090 Mhz Filter.
*
