Outdoor antenna recommendations?

Any suggestions these days as for an outdoor ADSB/1090 MHz antenna?

Thanks,
Alan

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WZL6WPO

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Depends on the amount of money you got approved by your minister of finance :wink:

I am using the Jetvision outdoor antenna which works best for my environment, but it’s not the cheapest one.

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If you are on a budget you can make one quite cheap, but making it water tight can be a challenge. Not impossible tough.

There’s a guy selling his stuff at eBay which are also offering good performance. It depends where you live.

Like this one:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Antenna-5-8-great-coverage-ads-b-ADSB-1090mhz-high-gain-N-con-FE1090-S/293537792823?hash=item4458374337:g:P4oAAOSwev1c19bi

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QUICK SPIDER - No Soldering, No Connector

 

ENHANCEMENT FOR OUTDOOR USE

 

I’m using this one from the same seller mounted outside which is doing pretty well:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Antenna-ads-b-collinear-1090mhz-white-great-gain-COL1090-5-H-Vinnant/303597742569?_trkparms=aid%3D1110001%26algo%3DSPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20200423095753%26meid%3Def056060fb2a4073a92727736733fa74%26pid%3D101224%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D5%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D293537792823%26itm%3D303597742569%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2047675&_trksid=p2047675.c101224.m-1

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I have one in the mail.
Got curious and ordered one. I don’t know if it will perform better than my FA-antenna, but since I work from home due to the current situation I can spend some of the money I don’t have to spend on fuel on new gadgets to try out.

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  1. How-to Protect Outdoor Connectors and Cable From Ingress of Moisture (Due to Rain & Snow) and Resulting Short circuit, Corrosion, and Drop in Performance.

  2. For Beginners - Howto Connect FlightAware Antenna, Filter and Pro Stick - Connectors and Cables Required

 

 

I’m pretty new here and only started about a month ago, but I put this one on my roof and I am reaching 200NM+ at times.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K7YW1XJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It’s the one on the right.

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These Antennas (Jetvision, Flightaware, Radarbox) are normally showing a similar performance. I thought about this RB antenna as well.
The only disadvantage is the cable which is mounted fix to the antenna and cannot be simply exchanged.
That’s why i decided to get the Jetvision.

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I use DPD Productions

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Thank you to all for the details on your outdoor antennas… greatly appreciated.
Alan

Got one the other day (after almost 30 days of transport from Slovakia to Sweden!) and mounted it on the roof yesterday.
Here are my first impressions:
Build quality is very good. Weather seals looks good. The N-connector is hidden and protected from direct rain/snow. I did as usual and sealed it with selfamalgamating tape and some electrical tape outside of that.
Mounted the antenna on the chimney yesterday and connected it to my box with a 7-pole cavity filter and a tripple-filtered RTL-SDR LNA inside via 1 meter of LMR400 flex cable. After that there is 8 meters of CLF200 cable to the airspy mini.

I will do a more comprehensive test with various gains (one gain setting per week) but the first impression is that the message rate is somewhat higher than before (at the same gain) and that I get more messages from aircrafts closer to the horizon. It’s certainly not performing worse than my Flightaware antenna. Considering that the price for this antenna is approx 50% of the Flightaware antenna it’s a bargain when it comes to performance. How well it can handle the weather remains to be seen. Winters around here can be quite harsh with snow and plenty of ice so that will be interesting to follow.

I asked Stanislav about the construction of the antenna and here is what he says:
“the antenna is made using predetermined gauge of the copper wire and series of coils”.

Hopefully he will be able to sell a larger version of the same antenna with 7.5 dBd once the coronastuff has passed. I’ll most likely pick up one of those once it becomes available.

He did have a bigger version with higher gain listed a while back, but I think he just makes them in batches.

Mine has been up since last September and there’s no evidence of weather being a problem. I’ve not been up to inspect it, but performance has been consistently good.

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Some results from Google search for 9 dBi 1090 MHz Antenna:

(1) ADS-B Vertical Outdoor Base Antenna, DPD Production, US $149.95

(2) Fujian Quanzhou Huahong Communication Co. Ltd, 1090MHz 9dBi Antenna for ADS-B

The roof-climbing-season is approx 6 months here, so hopefully it will be available soon :grin:

It should manage by the looks of it. This far I’m very pleased with the antenna.

Right now I’m seeing the highest message rate since the pandemic started…

Isn’t there a thread somewhere here saying that more than +5dB is technically not possible without additional amplification?

Based on years playing with antennas, both verticals, yagi, and dishes, Gain is a diminishing return kind of thing. Antennas can have much more than 5db gain. You get gain by having more resonant antenna parts that are phased in just the right way to add to the overall signal. You can use coils or phasing loops like @abcd567 does with his V phased antenna (nice design there). There are no absolutes with antennas. Design programs get us close, but nothing like having the right test gear and time to play with the different aspects of the antenna.

For good gain, both antenna segment length and phasing are critical. Collinear antennas often use many coax segments, and because signals go slower inside coax vs free space, resonant coax lengths can be difficult to get right. Then you have to get good solid connections between the segments. Never trivial and too often counter intuitive. This is one of the things that make this hobby fun, and why we appreciate prebuilt antennas like FA’s and DPD’s for giving us low cost antennas that just work when we put them up as high as we can. Getting too long here, signing off for a while.

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That’s what we’ve got on the MTG site roof and it’s doing pretty good. That site is very exposed to the elements, being right by the sea and it tends to destroy aerials.

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