I’ve been running the orange box at a elevation of 400+ feet with the antenna connected to my house around 25 feet. Major airport at sea level is about 35 miles North of my location.
South view of antenna is open and receiving data on all south approach and take offs from airport.
West view is open with a house and some trees. I’m receiving data from a military airport and west bound air travel to airport.
North / North East view has houses and trees. I’m not receiving any data from the airport north/north east. So, if an incoming flight coming from north / north east to a south approach runway landing or taking off and heading north, I’m not seeing any flights or data.
Is there any fix to extend the range by raising the antenna higher? (I could put the antenna on a 80 foot tall tree)
If you can see more of the NE horizon from up in the tree, probably yes. “Probably” because putting the antenna higher will require longer coax which will add more signal attenuation. The amount of attenuation depends on the type of coax. If you were using your own RPi-based feeder I’d suggest using an RTL-SDR Blog SDR dongle with bias-T enabled and putting a filtered LNA below the antenna but you can’t do that with a FlightFeeder box. Also your range is going to be limited to around 250 nautical miles no matter how high the antenna is due to the curvature of the earth. There may be other terrain blocking your maximum theoretical range. Go to the heywhatsthat website, create a panorama specifying your location and antenna height then click the “up in the air” button on the map.
Thank you for the information and website. I can see why I’m not seeing any north/north east to south landings. My antenna does need to be higher. I’ll look into that at a later date.
