I’ve never powered mine out of the case, so I didn’t notice, but the photo shows an LED on the PCB, so this would be an easy way to tell you’ve got the Bias-T enabled.
I will drill a hole in the case just above the LED. The problem is I cannot recognize which one is an LED. All SMT components look alike: liliputian butter packs. 
This looks like an LED to me (although I haven’t seen it glow)
If you zoom in, you can see a green dot indicating the cathode and colour.
SMT components are surprisingly fun to work with.
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adding -T worked here is the scan a lot of noise is gone but still noise around 1090.
FA pro stick +
What were the gain settings for both tests? The RTL-SDR LNA has 27 dB of amplification. The FA stick 19 dB amplifier. The rtl-sdr scan appears to be at higher total gain than the FA stick’s scan? I think you have to scan with 8 dB less gain on the rtl-sdr scan to even things out (-g 22 vs -g 30). (Assuming you didn’t do that already).
Thanks
Yes, provided I still had same sharp eyes and steady hands as I had 20 years ago.
USB microscopes are cheap. PCB holders work well.
I would recommend you upgrade your soldering iron though!
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The issue is with the commands given doing a relative scaling instead of using an absolute scale.
There are some blips of ADS-B on 1090 MHz visible while with the FA Pro + they are not visible.
So that’s some sort of improvement … maybe.
I’d say you have some HDMI cable or other interference somewhere near your antenna or your coax isn’t shielding sufficiently.
Where is the antenna placed?
Its taped to a window in a bottom floor unit next to a large apartment block. Not Ideal… there has been an improvement though with the setup vs the previous. I can see that through graphs 1090 and the differential between a station right next to it with a FA Blue and chinese PCB antenna.
Which model/make of soldering iron you recommend for SMD ?
My 30 watt soldering iron burnt out last year, and now I use a 200 watts soldering gun. The soldering gun has already damaged a bias-t when soldering dc wires to it, and I am now using another bias-t which does not require soldering, it has screw-terminals for dc wires.
Hence my suggestion!!
Hard to make a specific recommendation as there are so many good / acceptable irons available.
The power of the iron isn’t a problem, it’s the temp (and the skill of the operator).
Personally I use a Metcal (now Oki) RF iron. It’s got very delicate tips, but still packs a 70W heater.
Cheap irons rely on thermal mass of the tip to maintain a constant temp, but the RF irons maintain the temp using high(er) power and fast feedback.
Head over to eevblog for some reviews - something for every price range / budget.
Soldering - if it smells like chicken, you are doing it wrong.
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It will smell like BarBQ if you hold the soldering iron the way she is holding it.
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Without Cavity
With Cavity
A comparison of the new spec RTL SDR V3 Dongle and Triple Filter/Amp with and without the sysmocom 1090 cavity filter
The cavity filter is before the LNA?
Almost seems to me the new version (which they didn’t even announce they were changing parts) has much less resistance against interference, the previous run was so good in that regard 
uputronics promised to add front-end filtering to their 1090 LNA but i haven’t seen any news on that front.
On the other hand it might be the scaling issue with that spectrum tool.
I don’t suppose you could make a comparison without the autoscaling?
Lightning has unfortunately destroyed my RTL-SDR LNA earlier this week.
I checked my previous order from 18 months ago and I paid $26.95 for the LNA, today’s version is at $39.95 and it uses wider saw filters! 
cavity is before the LNA
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