That’s hard to argue with, I’m impressed!
Is it this cable?
It’s an odd choice as it’s neither low loss like an LMR/LL nor conveniently flexible like RG174
Yes, it’s antenna from nooelec bundle.
Anyway, I think I did it this time!
My rebuilt spider:
I only had it running for few hours but max range is the same (275km) and area covered is slightly bigger (81 vs 80kkm2). I’ll have to wait another 12 hours to fully compare the stats.
Things I’ve changed:
- crimp connectors instead of soldering
- 2.5mm2 copper wire instead of 4mm2
- 2m RG58 instead of short RG6
The first two points shouldn’t have much effect right?
Could I have just dodgy batch of RG6?
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That’s possible, or the connectors didn’t work properly.
As i wrote before you really want to test reducing whip length gradually.
I have had much better luck with 62mm or shorter whips, measured from the shielding.
Did you terminate the RG6 yourself? Is the RG6 quad shield? I think quad shield can be a problem if not terminated correctly.
@Dxista
I did, but it wasn’t my first RG6, I’ve terminated hundreds of them in my life:)
RG6 is not quad shielded.
I’ve ordered some WF100 to try, apparently RG6 quality went downhill in recent years.
Anyway, I’m quite pleased ) how my rebuilt spider is performing so I thought I share some stats.
I’ve been running for 24h with --gain 49.6 and then another 24h with -10. You can easily spot when I switched it. Given we’re in the middle of the week, the flight patterns should be similar.
I’m thinking about adding extra 4 legs just for fun.
As RG6 became more popular (one can buy RG6 at the Dollar store 
), other companies started making them as well, and not always with the same quality. Brand name should still be OK though.
A handy tip with the graphs, if you edit the config file
$ sudo nano /etc/default/graphs1090
and set
all_large=yes
then all the graphs are the same width and line up vertically. This is really useful for using your mouse to point to a change in one graph and then scrolling up or down to see how the other graphs were affected at that point.
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cool, thanks! I’ll try.