Splitter

[barrettepp]

I am just going to ask this, I have been reading as much information as I can but seem to just be going around in circles. I would like to be able to track both 1080 and 978. Right now I am tracking just 1080. I am using an outdoor dual band antenna on a 13 ft pole on the corner of my yard. I have a flight aware filter and then a nooelec LNA. My location is not ideal but my average max range is 170ish nm.

I know the best way to add 978 would be with another antenna but what would be a lot of adding on to my location.

I know some people have been successfully using splitters to add another dongle with varying results.

Those of you who have done this. What splitter did you use? What kind of range did you lose once you split your feed.

Most of the post I have read most people recommend a mini-circuit splitter. Which are cheapest to purchase used on eBay. The one post I read was suggesting the zapd 21. Is there anything else I would need to look for.

Thank you

[jafrank]

I don’t run one, but when I looked into adding one a couple of years ago I was pretty discouraged by the results that I was likely to get without spending more money and adding more gear.

Remember that with a splitter, each receiver will only get half of the total signal strength. So you will want an amplifier, ideally before the splitter. But that is going to amplify everything - including out of band signals and noise, so you will likely need a filter at each dongle too.

If you do all of that you will have better results, but they will still be worse than running two antennas and no splitter.