One of my receivers suddenly lost about a hundred miles or so of range and a commensurate amount of messages.
I swapped the cables between the dongles and the problem moved to the other receiver so it looked like it is the LNA. I went in the loft and could see that the LED was alight on both of them so bias-t is working.
I had a spare LNA so I fitted that and only got aircraft within about 10 miles so that one is even worse and I refitted the low gain one for now.
The question is what to do. Given that RTL-SDR Blog have none available and aren’t expecting to because they are working on an active antenna instead, what would be a good replacement for it?
Before ordering a replacement LNA, I suggest you swap the spare (10 mile range) LNA for the working one, to verify that the spare LNA is defective. Instead of 2 bad LNAs, you might instead have a cable, antenna, or connector problem on the receiver that suddenly lost range.
Not so sure.
My most recent filter/amp lasted six weeks before failing.
Mine is (was) a different design, but same origin.
I’ll be able to swap it with an unused replacement in a couple of weeks - will be interesting to see how long that lasts (both from the same batch).
My Uputronics is outside only covered in a control cabinet facing temperatures < 0°C and > 30°C since a couple of years and is still operational as on day one
I have just checked my records and discovered that I bought two of these LNAs six years ago and one of them was faulty so I contacted them and they sent me a replacement. I put the duff one in my box of bits, and forgot all about it until a few days ago. So it isn’t really surprising that it doesn’t work.
From that and your comments, it seems these LNAs can be a bit iffy.
Mind you, I suppose six years of trouble free service isn’t bad considering the price I paid.
I was getting ~80 planes at a max of 170NM on feeder 1 and ~50 planes at a max of 120NM on feeder 2 this morning so I went in the loft and swapped the cables.
It made no difference so I removed the LNA and it dropped to about a third of what I was getting.
I put the ‘dead’ LNA on and got ~30 planes at a max of 80NM.
I put the ‘suspect’ LNA on and am now getting ~65 planes at a max of 150NM.
So both LNAs do have gain but not as much as the one on feeder 1. However, there must also have been a loose connection in the cable somewhere to go from nothing to something on the dead one and any kind of improvement on the suspect one.
I’m considering an active antenna but might wait and see what RTL-SDR Blog come up with in that line. Whatever it is would be a massive step up from my home made spiders.
I can sign that statement.
I have this one outdoor since two years.
Unfortunately they changed the socket, so the connector is not shielded any longer. They used previously the same socket as this one where the connector is in that tube at the end. Also the clamps are looking more reliable for that large antenna.
One of my RTL-SDR Blog Triple Filtered LNAs died in the same way in August. LED was still on but it was passing very little signal. Replaced it with an Uputronics.
I tried a few years ago, but what was delivered was DOA (the amp chip was smashed and only had three legs).
Recently, I’ve had a low-hours failure on an Ali-express special, so I’ll be putting another strip-line/amp into service. Will be interesting to see how it goes.
