This is my ADS-B setup.
It is basically 1090 MHz antenna with LMR400 coax about 25 feet long, Flight Aware 1090 blue filter, Uutronics 1090 LNA, Flight Aware Splitter 1090, Radarbox Green dongles and then Raspberry Pi 3B/4B.
Antenna is about 20 ft in the air with no major nearby obstructions.
I am finding my range is not wonderful, or maybe I am just expecting too much ?
Here are my stats … ADS-B Stats
Thanks
Kevin
Those thin coax cables and pre-amp are susceptible to noise, from the RPI and devices like TVs (I have one setup in my bedroom that loses 30% of the traffic when the TV is on).
You can also look at putting the dongles in metal cases for noise protecting and a little cooling.
I am fairly low, 20ft AMSL with antennas another 20ft up. Below is an airspy setup in my attic(I have a better antenna, however, it is not working well at the moment), I can get out to the NW pretty well. Other directions are blocked by ridges and apartment buildings.
Sure you need two filters? the uputronics already has one iirc.
Out of curiosity, why the spliter and two PIs? you can feed different sites with just one.
Using a 4-way splitter when you only need two outputs will not be helping either. Simplistically, you are getting one quarter of the input signal at each output compared with half the input with a two way splitter.
You could try eliminating the pigtail cables by attaching the dongles directly to the splitter, then connecting to the Pi s with very short usb cables.
Based on the above comments I have made some changes. I will let it run for a day and see how it works out. Thanks.
But … in a brief summary. Splitter is gone. Now 2 antennas, one to each Pi. One Pi has rooftop antenna to LNA and green dongle. Other Pi has balcony antenna (lower) and Flight Aware filter and green dongle.
It does look better … just did 317 km / 190 miles at -17 dB (on the rooftop antenna). The balcony one is going to be for closer.
If you haven’t before, try the heywhatsthat.com site to check your radio horizon for aircraft. No point making drastic changes to your receivers if your limitation is terrain.
It was actually three, as the Radarbox dongles have their own filter.
The dongles will benefit from being connected to the Pi’s with USB cables as this will isolate them from the heat that sinks from the Pi to the dongle via the direct USB connection.
As you are looking for more range you could get rid of everything except the pi, the dongle and the antenna and set the gain to maximum.
Load Wiedehopf’s graphs1090 and see what your signals are like and if you need the filters and amplifiers.
Then work out what you need be it amplifiers, filters or a better antenna.
S
@caius I did, thank you. I would be pretty happy if I could truly get that range.
@geckoVN … it definitely helps from adding another filter. I live in a very urban area (city of about 1,000,000 people) with unfortunately few planes. I need to try to squeeze out every one I can get.
Here is some graph data (8 hours as I am not to the 24 hour mark since I made changes) from one of my Pi setups. This one has antenna, LNA and then green dongle.
What is your gain setting during this 8 hours of test?
I was at 32.8 but my percentage was 12.3% (24 hour) so I lowered it for a day to see how it works out.
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