Substitute AirNav FlightStick with FA Pro Stick Plus?

I asked a similar question the other day about whether it was a simple plug&play to substitute an AirNav FlightStick with an Airspy Mini and discovered it wasn’t as I had to install airspy-adsb and make some config changes.

But my question this time round is whether I can substitute my existing AirNav FlightStick with the FlightAware Pro Stick Plus?

I’m guessing this time the answer might be yes but wanted to run it past you guys first just in case.

I have already read some comparisons but it would be interesting to me to compare the performance of FlightStick vs pro Stick Plus on my own system to see what differences if any there might be.

Figured if it was as easy as unplugging one and plugging another in I might give that a go before I installed airspy-adsb and tried the Mini.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

YES, it is that easy.

Fantastic!

I think even I can manage that… :rofl:

I’m just about to add FA to my existing feeders as that seems pretty straightforward. Famous last words!

I have already installed the repository which was where I installed dump1090-fa from so hopefully all I have to do is;

sudo apt-get install piaware

sudo piaware-config allow-auto-updates yes
sudo piaware-config allow-manual-updates yes

And it shouldn’t mess with any of my configs hopefully?

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Yes, it works that easy

Should run without issues.
After the two commands you need to restart the piaware service
sudo systemctl restart piaware

And check the logs afterwards to verify that piaware has identified the running dump1090-fa instance properly.
After a few minutes the updates should appear in your receiver profile.

No, it won’t

 

After above commands:

(1) sudo systemctl resrtart piaware

(2) login to your Flightaware account, go to this page, and claim your station
Claim your PiAware client on FlightAware.com

Well that can mess with your system because of the auto-update :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
(though it’s usually not an issue)

Or use the already existing feederID from your profile. Makes more sense than starting new just because of the stick swap.

Details here:

For Beginners - How to Get Back Existing Station Number in A Fresh Install - FlightAware / ADS-B Flight Tracking - FlightAware Discussions

I dont think he has an existing Flightaware feederID.
Initially he had dump1090-mutability, FR24 feeder and RB24 feeder.
Later, on recommendation of @obj, he purged dump1090-mutability and installed dump1090-fa it’s place, and that is all.
Now he is going to install Piaware data feeder, so he will get his first Flightaware feederID now.

  1. His version of OS is Buster, and version of dump1090-fa and Piaware is latest 4.0, so no issues expected, at least for a year or two. I have kept auto update enabled for years on all my RPi’s and never faced any issue

  2. The main advantage of enabling manual-aupdate is that he would be able to remotely issue commands to his RPi from his FA Stats page. That wont mess with his system. He can say No to auto-update and Yes to manual-update.

Thanks very much for all your input abcd567, wiedehopf, foxhunter etc.

It was that easy in the end and it’s all up & running and feeding FA including MLAT thanks to you guys! :+1:

Nice to be able to give a little something back for all the help, advice & support I’ve received on here.

It just takes me a while trying to understand what I’m doing that’s all…I’m not the kind of person who jumps in and blindly runs commands, scripts etc. without trying to understand something about the process first.

Having said that abcd still knows more about my setup than I do… :blush:

I’ve ordered the blue Pro Stick Plus and I’m going to swap that in first to see if there’s any difference between it and the AirNav FlightStick which is also supposed to have an LNA and filter in it.

I’m not expecting to see much difference between the two but need to compare them for my own peace of mind and as its just a straight swap with no installing/configuring or playing around with the Kuhne 1090 LNA as would be the case with the Airspy I’m going down that road first.

Possibly… :crazy_face:

All I’m trying to do is optimise my station for peak performance but its close to becoming an obsession so much that I’m even thinking of replacing the 7-8m of Westflex 103 with LMR400 or something similar as if Westflex 103 isn’t good enough! :grimacing:

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Don’t bother. Westflex103 is 16.8 dB loss /100 Meters, LMR400 is ~3.8 loss /100 Feet. or ~ 12 dB loss/100 Meter. with your less than 10 Meter run it’s 1.7 dB Vs 1.2 dB difference. Many sites on the internet leave the “Feet” off of their advertisement for the LMR400

I understood he wanted to swap a device, so i was expecting it.

Thanks for taking the time to reply cwalker51,

I was being facetious really but yeah I did notice in some instances the quoted loss seemed to be so much lower than anything else on the market so that feet/m bit would explain it.

I also saw some other coax quoting half the loss of 103 but when you pro-rata that to the length I am talking about the loss is minimal in any case.

One thing that intrigued me was the ability to fit an SMA plug to one end of the coax which would save the N Type to SMA adaptor or tail but again those losses would be minimal.

Did I mention it was close to becoming an obsession? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Ah…yeah sorry. I was only feeding RB24 & FR24 and at that time was not feeding FA although that has changed now.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

Thanks, i think i missed that part… sorry

Hey no worries foxhunter…I appreciate your input.

Thanks & kind regards,
-=Glyn=-

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