Noob question: first time with PiAware

Hello All !

Sorry if this as been asked undred of times !

I just downloaded the PiAware 3.8.1 image, configured (LAN DHCP) and installed in my Raspberry PI3b+. RX is a poor USB dongle, antenna is an outside discone. All seem to be OK up and running but till now, no planes as been acquired … very poor traffic.

The very same setup (discone + pi3b+ SDRPlay RSP2 + dump1090) installed and build on a standard Raspian image do work well … except few planes every day. VirtualRadar is run on a different Win7 machine.

Question: is it possible to replace RX from poor USB stick to more performant SDRPlay Hardware ? How to find detailed descriptions ? There are tons of info on internet but not very usefull.

Thank you for any info ! hb9rxc

Air traffic is much lower than normal at the moment due to the coronavirus pandemic.Depending on where you are, you may not be seeing any traffic at all sometimes.

A discone is not an ideal antenna for receiving ads-b - ideally you want one designed for 1090MHz. A decent quality rtl dongle with an appropriate outdoor antenna will give good performance, especially if you use a filtered pre-amp. If you are going to spend money improving your reception, then a good antenna is a much better investment than a better receiver initially.

I wouldn’t recommend an SDRPlay if it’s going to be used as a dedicated receiver for ads-b - an airspy mini and pre-amp would likely give you better performance as the airspy decoder is working very well now and can take full advantage of the hardware.

@wiedehopf has put together a list of recommended items that people have found to work well.

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