I have just set up a new ads-b station. My first attempt with an antenna is a $9.99 one from amazon: Acxico 1Pcs ADS-B 1090MHZ PCB Antenna ANT. I have the antenna up about 27 feet ( with some less than ideal coax RG174? ) , enclosed in a pvc pipe to limit moisture. I am near DFW Airport and I have received at most, 66 planes at one time, up to 92 miles out.
I am thinking about getting some lmr400 or LMR240 but before I mess with that and bring down my antenna to run the better coax, I was thinking maybe I can do better than a $9.99 pcb antenna.
Can someone suggest a $50-ish 1090mhx external antenna that I can get to replace my $9.99 pcb antenna?
I have a similar one, but from a different vendor.
It has 5.5 dBi gain which is about as much gain as you can reasonably get. It’s 1090 MHz only rather than 1090/978 MHz which is better (since there’s going to be some compromise in a dual band antenna).
Yes, $180 for that antenna. I’m sure it’s better quality than a $50 antenna.
I see it has 9 dBi gain also. The higher the gain, the more accurately the antenna needs to be made (and mounted) so that gain is aligned with the horizon.
I’m in Florida, USA and I recall my shipping was near to a week or a little less. That specific antenna qualifies for international shipping at a reasonable cost. Where are you Jim?
Yes it was shipped from Slovakia. They are great people to deal with. The owner of the company contacts you directly. I typically track 400 aircraft out to beyond 200 nm with that antenna.
The ADS-B antenna I have is pretty good, but I dare to disagree on this point. Nice at first, but less friendly when all tests pointing towards another antenna was being faulty. At a point I just gave up, but later I found antenna and connector were not properly connected inside.
I think that was the problem, they could not believe or accept that one of their antennas could be faulty.
At a certain point I gave up, I did not get a replacement or any refund, and buy my stuff from other people now.
After a year or so I carefully deconstructed it, for fun, and found the issue with the soldering of the wires connected to the N connector, which more or less fitted the results of the tests we did at the time.
Tom, Big increase in traffic volume here on the Florida peninsula today. Must be the increase in traffic from NY city after the election yesterday for Mayor of NYC.
No, opening it up from top destroyed it, a lot of effort had being going into waterproofing it. Also it would have need a complete rebuild, not resoldering the connector. And that was a year later and as I already had a different antenna in use.
I have some updates. I wanted to stay around the $50 limit I originally posted and got a “ADS-B Flightaware 1090MHz Antenna 5.5dBi for Aviation ADS-B Receiver RTL SDR Software Defined Radio USB Stick Dongle Tuner Receiver”
from Amazon. I also got 25’ of LMR400 coax.
I am still not done testing, but I am pretty disappointed in this $50+ antenna and coax. I spent over $85 on the antenna and coax. The $9.99 10MHz PCB antenna I had with a 15’ piece of bad coax still does almost as good as my new antenna. Sure… the new antenna is better… but it’s not $85+ better.
Right now I am getting 52 planes with the $9.99 antenna and 68 planes with the more expensive one ( I have two pis, two rtl-sdrs, 2 25’ antenna masts…. the comparisons are reasonable close ) I have a max distance of 67 miles with the $9.99 antenna and 76 miles with the more expensive rig.
I am going to upgrade the coax on the $9.99 antenna and see how much an improvement that does with that antenna.
Like I said.. the new antena is better… but I expected it to be a lot better.
How many should you be getting? Are other feeders in your area doing significantly better than you?
I average somewhere around 1,200 flights per day (with a max of 80-90 at a time) in the summer on my feeder. I see people post on here who are seeing multiples of what I see. But when I look at feeders in my area on the stats page, I am far and away the most productive feeder - usually by 300 or more flights. I am pretty sure that I am picking up just about every plane that is within range. Raising my antenna, or upgrading, or trying to find better cable isn’t going to create planes that aren’t there.
If others nearby are doing better, are you sure that you aren’t having an interference issue? Often, an upgraded antenna will pull in more of everything - including signals that you don’t want.
All of that to say that your money might be better spent on a filter.
