I am happy to say I received my flight feeder yesterday! I haven’t mounted the antennae on the roof yet but plan to today. I was thinking I would run a cat5 in the basement to the south side of the house(away from a neighbors tree) and run it up that way.
I’ve been enjoying reading the forums and will continue to. However, do any of you have any advise for me?
Also, what is the best way for me to display the flights I am actually tracking?
Thanks so much! I have been a flight aware user for years and am glad to be a part of the ADS-B network!
If you go to IP-of-your-flightfeeder/ (from a PC on the same network) there is a status page and a link to a local map which will show you what you’re tracking.
Or you can follow the “view live data” link on your stats page: flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/JEChupein
Oh hi! I saw your feeder pop up nearby. I’m over in Bozeman.
Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to the forums and site as much but I recently moved and I’m disappointed by the current range I’m getting (98% of my data is within 50 miles), so I’m currently in the process of upgrading my setup.
Hi!! I actually drive four days a week to work at BZN lol. I’m getting my setup completed today with a better antennae position. Hopefully it’ll work good!
I’m new to this but already want to upgrade everything haha. Let me know how it goes!
I decided to buy a UPS and put it up in the rafters, and then plug my RPi into it, and use one of the “surge protector only” plugs for the furnace/air conditioner.
After 2 days I noticed my air wouldn’t come on, and I couldn’t ping the RPi. Well, I’m an old man, so crawling up there was hard enough the first time, but tonight it was a real pain. Took it all down and will have to put my coax from the back room back up there. I didn’t really notice a range improvement without the coax!
OKC is kind of in a valley, so unless you live near Norman, you can’t really see Dallas low-level.
Anyway, the UPS smells burned, so I don’t think it was able to handle the surge current of the air conditioner. Glad it didn’t burn the place down.
I have it installed in another temporary position but at least its outside now!
I have to wait until the snow melts before I am going to get on the roof
I have a lot of ambitions for really getting into this and reading through the forums I see I have a lot to learn. But, there is some good information here!
Haha thanks for the advice! I actually bought a pole mount like for a flagpole and I am going to put that on the side of the house then extend it as high as I can get it. I installed for a cable tv company once so I will be able to make it look nice anyway
edgy, JEChupein, at the top left of the discussion page you will see ‘0 new messages’. That is a link to FA’s private message system. If you want to exchange messages off the main discussions it is available. Cheers.
So I wasn’t quite sure what the weak point of my system was. I was getting spotty reports within 50 miles, and was lucky to get anything beyond that. (I was using a Diamond D130J antenna and 30 feet of RG-58 with UHF connectors, basically stuff I already had from amateur use.)
So I built a spider antenna specifically for 1090 Mhz and paired it with 15 feet of LMR-240 with N connectors. And I’m completely blown away. I’m getting rock solid reception out past 150 miles, as terrain allows. I’m now continuously receiving half a dozen flights, as opposed to one or two when they are overheard.
Yeah, that combination wasn’t going to work so well. The UHF connectors and RG-58 both have pretty high losses at 1GHz and the discone, while it should work, is going to lose some gain versus a more tightly tuned antenna. You’re probably giving up 10dB or more there.
I am happy to say I received my flight feeder yesterday! I haven’t mounted the antennae on the roof yet but plan to today. I was thinking I would run a cat5 in the basement to the south side of the house(away from a neighbors tree) and run it up that way.
