Position rejection from Flightaware

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hi all!!

Since 10 days now the reported positions on my statistics is getting lower and lower.
My equipment is brand new so there is no issue yet for humidity penetrating connections plugs etc.
I get great cover. I get sometimes max 190 messages /sec but my statistics on reported positions are rock bottom. It seems for some reason that the system is rejecting my reports. What can i do to improve it?
The dongle i use is a aliexpress common as seen on this URL
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000572403567.html?gps-id=pcDetail404&scm=1007.16891.96945.0&scm_id=1007.16891.96945.0&scm-url=1007.16891.96945.0&pvid=9d1aa9f8-af63-4a42-838f-722c3a831834&_t=gps-id:pcDetail404,scm-url:1007.16891.96945.0,pvid:9d1aa9f8-af63-4a42-838f-722c3a831834,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2348_668%23808%233772%23832_668%23888%233325%236_668%234328%2319928%23301_668%232846%238113%23689_668%232717%237561%23327__668%233374%2315176%23699
No LNA or filters on this one i suppose
My antenna is a co-co made from HELIAX 1/4 coax cable and the feed line is a 50cm RG8 to the dongle in an air/water tight enclosure under the antenna. Connection of the dongle with the raspberry is done by a 4m USB cable that seemed to work until 15 days ago. Since then from 390.000 position reported i dropped gradually down to average 45 to 60.000 max.
if i try to reduce my gain other than -10 which is the max then range is dropped dramatically as well as the messages/sec.
Has anybody else faced the same problem?
Any ideas or solutions?

2

Sounds like a gradual hardware failure.

3

Without having some insight into your logs, it’s a mission impossible to identify the failure

4

https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/thanospapantonopoulos#stats-137067

5

it’s good material to start but you should know that at the moment the aeronautical activity is not in great shape. I am in the same case … it decreases day by day … but we must not forget that there is the covid and many destinations are stopped see at least

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You had lots of positions probably on the ground from some airport that made up the bulk of your positions, those aren’t present right now, hard to tell what exactly it was.
See the diagrams … you can select the day for it.

As long as your distant positions more significantly reduce i wouldn’t worry about the reception getting worse.

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UPDATE:
I have done a small research based on the facts for the last 45 days and here are the results.
As wiedehopf mentioned during the middle of Oct due to atmospheric changes (as well as season change) i started receiving messages from firetrucks and follow me car from the nearest airport (LGTS) which is 100km away from my town. I remember receiving like 45000 from each during the day and specially at night.
Additionally i was tracking and receiving for 10 days i a row messages from 6 private owned planes hired by the Ministry of agriculture. Those planes were flying from 09:00 to 17:00 every days more than 6 sorties each and were flying in a 50km radius from my station.
Also since i live in Greece with many charter touristic flights i didn;t take in to account that those flight reduce during winter.
All these extra targets most probably confused me as i am still new to this hobby. Together with my attempts to improve my reception and testing different antennas i made, i thot i found the duck that lays the golden egg but apparently it was a coincidence :smiley: .
I guess now i am back to the normal till next season change with different conditions!!!

9

Wow, Heliax is a great cable to make a Coco

image

 

 

A very successful antenna made by @PeterFairlie using Andrew Heliax LDF1-50

 

 

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