I built a homemade antenna, had it on my roof - was picking up a decent amount of airplanes - ran that for several years.
I recently bought a FlightAware 1090 MHz ADS-B Antenna - 66 cm / 26 in. Installed it in the exact same location…FA-BAMMM, I was immediately getting twice, sometimes three times the contacts.
Congrats! What was your range before & after?
if it’s that different, your DIY antenna was obviously not well designed.
I made a simple spider based on @abcd567 suggestions at the beginning of my journey
. After the change to different professional antennas i had a max increase of 50%.
My final antenna is a JetVision model
However you might have found your optimal setup now.
was picking up over 500 aircraft a day, so probably not the worst DIY ever built.
Previous: almost all contacts within 40 mi range and small amount in the 40-80.
Now: 40 mi contacts have tripled, 40-80 has doubled, and now getting a small amount in the 80-120 range. I can see airplanes IN THE PATTERN at a GA airport 30 miles from me (i.e. only 1000ft above ground). It brings a smile to my face every time I open the page and I see a long list of planes scrolling on the side of the screen and all sorts of airplane icons peppered around my map! Hashtag Aviation Happiness
That’s not what i was saying. But an improvement by +200% shows it 
That’s a bad metric.
Did you also replace the coax going from the roof to the receiver, that could have just as big an influence as changing the antenna.
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