My stats are a bit low at the moment.
My mast is horizontal, it was dropped mid morning on Saturday to build a new HF aerial.
Unfortunately the build hasn’t gone quite according to plan so rather than have a vertical aerial right up in the air, my aerial is horizontal and only about 5ft off the ground.
Oops.
This might ultimately give me a chance to replace the aerial with a larger one and increase the height a bit as well, so it’s not all bad.
What antenna are you going to replace it with? One of the Vinnant ones?
Aye, that’s what I’m thinking. The CC1090/9-PSE version.
I can also manage to go another 8-10ft higher without too much trouble.
I’m ordering the PSE as well tomorrow when Stanislav has returned from his holiday.
I had mail contact with him last week, he told me that they were on holiday until 1/8 and the e-shop should have all items available again when they reopen( currently it is sold out).
Yikes! That’s quite a drop (no pun intended).
Repairing your hexbeam??
Replacing it. I’ve got a SteppIR UrbanBeam that I’ve been building and it’s about 90% complete. Sadly, the bolts they supply for some of the brackets really aren’t up to the job. They’re a really snug fit and have hex heads. It came with an allen key but that’s twisted and broken already. I had one spare but that’s gone the same way. I’ve picked up some replacement M3 x 60mm nuts and bolts so that’ll make things a bit easier.
I really want to get it finished and back up asap because I’m missing HF.
For the ADS-B aerial, I’m going to saw off the stub mast you can see in the photo, just above that metal plate that’s just visible on the right. The existing stub is an aluminium scaffold pole so it’s very thick wall and quite heavy. I’ll use a couple of pole joiners and fix a much lighter duty 2" ali pole there instead to give me some extra height.
It can be delivered to The Netherlands, I’ve sent him a mail as well as I also need another antenna listed as out of stock.
So I ordered by e-mail, haven’t had a response back yet to see if they accept the order by email.
When I select it in the e-shop now it gives me a cost of 22 euro ( 2 antennas and I also need some cabling).
He does have shipping options to the UK for other products, so it seems he is still sending stuff here. A lot of other retailers have just given up supplying the UK post-brexit because the VAT registration requirements and complaints they get when people get unexpected bills for import duties are not worth the hassle.
I guess that particular product falls outside whatever automated calculator his website is using.
Would this antenna be considered superior to the DPD Productions ADSB antenna? A few dBi more I see. Fiberglass vs. plastic construction. Slovakian made is cool but likey not a direct correlation to performance.
Asking for a friend in case my wife asks… 
It’s half the cost in comparison to the DPD antenna. I have the CC1090/9 version running for a year now and it is outperforming all my other setups I have. In total I have 12 stations running in an urban environment.
It gets me around 800.000 positions and 3000 aircraft per day so I’m quite happy with it. The PSE will replace a 7.5 dB antenna currently serving on the other side of the building ( I’m on the 3rd floor in a 9 story building). That 7.5 dB antenna gets around 50.000-100.000 positions less per day, and the aircraft number is usually 250 aircraft less.
I’ve had a reply which doesn’t really make sense because the P and the PSE look very similar. They claim the same length.
/edit - Correction. He’s pointing me at the 1090/8, not the 1090/9
many thanks for contacting us.Unfortunatelly this antenna is long to ship to UK by economy and we have currently no courier option as well as country drops from being provided ,sadly.
However we can send a next good antenna to you by economy and antenna meets worlwide standart as for the lenght wise.
It is sister antenna and very good.It will bein stock in a few days in case of interest:
The 8P is indeed shorter, 102 cm for the 8P en 133 cm for the 9P and PSE.
I saw the same recommendation done to someone in the US, he did get the 8P.
They ship via DPD as a courier (I’ve ordered multiple times from them) and maybe that’s where the restriction is.
I suspect getting it to the USA is likely restricted then. 
Nothing I like more than another ADSB antenna to experiment with.
That’s the thing, he’ll ship to the USA.
It’ll cost you $135 but he’ll do it.
I just recently received the Vinnant 8P via postal from Slovakia to central Florida, USA and it took 10 days. The length of the 8P allows it to ship what they call Economy. I have had it in the air since Sunday morning and I am very pleased with its improved performance to this point.
The 8P has just come back into stock so I’ve ordered one. I would have preferred the 9PSE but this’ll do.
What antenna did you have up previously?
A Jetvision, the one that’s the same as the FlightAware aerial. It’s been up since late 2019.
I don’t expect a huge difference, I’ll be raising it a bit at the same time.
I expect you may be pleasantly surprised. I changed nothing but the antenna to get an accurate measurement of the change and have seen some significant differences. No telling if your antenna location has some overriding circumstances but I wish you some resulting joy.
