New Hangar Setup

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
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Hello everyone. My company recently purchased a new hangar and we are wanting to setup an ADSB feeder. This will be my third feeder that I’ve setup, but this location presents a few challenges and I’m hoping to get some insight from the group.

First off, placing the receiver close to the antenna will be difficult for a few reasons. 1 - there are no power outlets at the top of the hangar. 2 - we will not have access to the top of the hangar without having to rent a boom lift.

Additionally, there are at least two VHF antennas that will be getting installed on the roof. These will be RX only, but I want to make sure they don’t interfere with the ADSB antenna.

So, with that said I have a few questions:

  1. Per my calculations, if I run 40ft of LMR-400 from the antenna to the receiver (to keep the receiver at ground level), I will experience ~2.5db of loss. Is that significant enough to cause issues? I’m thinking that I could counter that loss with a higher gain antenna, such as the DPD Productions antenna.

  2. Is it worth it to go with an Airspy R2? Or would the Airspy Mini work fine?

  3. Do I need to worry about the placement of the VHF antennas? Or should those not interfere as they are RX only?

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I’ll try to answer your questions from my point of view.

LMR400 would be fine for that distance.
2,5 db of loss could be countered with an LNA but that is an option not a requirement. That would eliminate the need for a higher gain antenna.

If you opt for an Airspy mini (half the cost of the R2) then an LNA would be required for optimal performance.

The VHF receiving antennas would not pose an issue to the setup as far as I can tell. You might want to add a filter if the frequency is high enough in order to eliminate unwanted side frequency’s

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It should be a filtered LNA. The Airspy is a wide band device and would be almost deaf without a filter which limits the reception to 1090 MHz

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@foxhunter yeah, I meant to include that in the original post. I’m planning on using a Uputronics 1090 LNA

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  1. that’s fine, even with a 5P vinnant or adsbexchange antenna
  2. mini is fine
  3. other RX antennas are only an issue closer than 1-2 ft, you can get a small dead zone in the direction of that antenna but it’s gonna be pretty small

If you mainly want to cover local traffic you can get easily get away even without an LNA really.
If you want best range though, filtered LNA ofc.

With all the costs already, might as well look into a cavity filter, in the US available for example here: https://store.airplanes.live/products/lothars-ads-b-cavity-filter-1090-mhz
That would go in front of the LNA and even if one day the VHF antennas would be turned into TX, you could still receive without issues because the cavity filter would attenuate it sufficiently.

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@Derek351, are you interested in tracking nearby aircraft on the ground and/or entering your hangar?

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The Uputronics is working fine for me since 2 years.
On testing i am using it with an Airspy Mini on a Raspberry 4.

My normal setup is my Jetvision Airsquitter where the Uputronics is attached between the device and the Vinnant antenna.

Works perfectly.

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I’ve had a good experience with them as well. I have one on my home setup with an Airspy R2 on an Ordriod N2+.

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@kenf3 I don’t care about planes coming into our hangar. Our primary goal is to see our own aircraft as well as customers, many of which are blocked otherwise. We will have ramp operations a few hundred yards to our north that will be nice to see though.

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a filter, sure, but you won’t be wanting a LNA if you are interested in aircraft only 100’s of meters away. You’ll just saturate the amp and see nothing.

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That’s a great point I hadn’t considered. We may have to install two systems to cover both close and long range.

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airspy can easily handle the dynamic range.
And most likely the uputronics will be ok as well if it’s 500m away. (i haven’t tested that though)
The uputronics is only 15 dB gain i believe, so it’s not quite as much as for example the rtl-sdr triple filtered LNA was.

You can get 200 nmi with just the airspy really so you can always try without an LNA if it doesn’t quite work with the uputronics.

So i really don’t think you’ll need 2 receivers.

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I can see aircraft which are passing my home, they are sometimes less than 300 Meters away. (e.g. rescue helicopter, police etc.)

Never had a problem that my device (independent if Airspy or Airsquitter) did not “see” them.