Well, I got VLad up to the roof today and found that he does NOT like heights. At deck level where I was testing him, he did very well tracking about 50 aircraft (good for the time of day). As I raised the platform from deck-level to roof-level he slowly tracked fewer and fewer aircraft until it was only 4 at the roof line. I thought maybe the connector had loosened or maybe even the cable pulled out of the crimp (even though it was well supported) so I started lowering the platform. Sure enough, as I lowered it, more aircraft popped back in until it was back to around 50 again. Hmmm. So I wiggled all the connectors, raised it again and played with adding another filter and adjusting the gain but to no avail. On a hunch, I brought it down and replaced VLad with the Mutant Spider and hauled the platform up again and by the time it got to the top, it picked up 25 more aircraft for a total of 75.
I’m not quite sure what the deal is. I’ll post some pics of the platform and antenna mounts in another thread so you can see that changing out the two antennas involved only replacing the antenna itself. No cables were even reconnected. I suspect it has something to do with the strong RF field from the TV and FM transmitters but I’ll have to test more.