I just installed a new PiAware 978 only system for less than $80. I am posting this to show others who do not have much computer/tech knowledge that it can be done and very inexpensively. I want to share that I am only (for now) interested in 978 UAT. The success was due to the help I got from this forum, esp abcd567.
Because this was a proof of concept for me, I wanted to start with as little cost as possible. Do I started with a RPi Zero 2 W. ($23 Amazon). I bought the Orange Pro-stic ($40). and 50ft of Coax and a vew SO-239. Rpi case ($12). I made my own antenna and antenna mount and PVC pipe.
Here are some pics. I will post more details about the process in a follow up post.
The good and not so good experience with setting up a PiAware as a newbie with very little tech knowledge.
Good…
The write up on flightaware on “how to set up a PiAware” was very helpful and quite detailed.
The “community” on FA was critically important and very helpful.
The hardware like the Pro-Stic and Raspberry Pi boards are readily available and quite inexpensive. The other components like antennas, etc are also cheap and available.
You can easily set up a system to receive 978mhz and or 1090mhz.
You can feed other plane tracking sites with the same PiAware set up.
The Not-so-good experience.
This process is heavily focused on 1090mhz, which I understand. The build your own PiAware is great for 1090. But it would be helpful in the build steps, if you could chose software for 1090, or 1090 and 978, or 978 only. I know there is more info at the bottom of the page on the 978 set up but it would be better IMHO to add it to the top. This would reduce a lot of the confusion on what needs to happen to add 978 later…
The process of configuring the firmware on the Raspberry Pi is not at all intuitive unless you are already familiar with Raspberry Pi SBC. By that I mean if you need to change something in the base IMG file, it is tough to figure how what to write, and a bit confusing because there are several ways to functionally change the code. Again, the community saved me here.
FA says you can use different Rpi boards. True. But it does not tell you the limitations or differences of using different boards, which would have been nice to know.
FA does not do a good job of explaining the details surrounding a set up of tracking both 978 and 1090. I.E. The pro-stick details say “*can receive data from either 1090 MHz or 978 UAT equipped aircraft *..” while this is true, it has resulted in quite a few folks misunderstanding that it can receive data from both 978 and 1090 aircraft - at the same time, which of course is not true. It just would be helpful to state that if someone wants to receive both 978 and 1090 at the same time, then this requires two SDR dongles one for 978 and one for 1090. Again, fortunately the community bails folks out here.
Congratulations on getting your site up and running.
You may want to rethink you use of PL259/SO239 as their performance suffers badly above VHF.
Also, they are not water resistant, so your coax will deteriorate.
Valid point. It just would have been better if it clarified that “but not both at the same time”. I’ll change that. Its about the most common question that people ask about so I mention it in hopes of helping folks who are new to PiAware…
Congrats, welcome to a very nice addiction next to flying I always analyze my flights afterwards as well. No 978 MHz here in Europe but good you got it up and running
Of course you can receive both bands at the same time - there is a massive thread dedicated to doing just this. You just need two receivers.
You have edited your post above, but still misquote the Prostick description.
“Either / Or” explicitly means “Not And” (refering of course to a single receiver).
True, but this is the nature of using any flavour of linux (regardless of platform).
The tighter you describe the steps, the quicker it goes out of date.
Lightning protection such as surge protectors / gas discharge / earthing of antenna cable etc, provide protection against static build up and distant lightning strikes, but do NOT provide any protection against a near or direct lightning strike.
Here is a limited screen shot of my first full day of activity. For a super simple cheap system using a home brew so239 antenna on my roof I am very happy with these results. For me, I was focused on how well I could track local UAT flights that were fairly low. Local guys. I am routinely seeing flights as low as 2000ft at 30 miles away. Considering I am in rural KY am very happy with that. (I know for you high altitude, urban area, 1090 commercial flight guys, these numbers are peanuts.) Charlie
That’s why i have mine additionally protected with a surge protection. If it comes to a lightning strike, it only kills the Pi, but not the whole energy networkg at home.
Ill look at the heywhatsthat, thank you for sharing that. Things to consider on these numbers. Rural KY plus I have ONLY 978 UAT with antenna on a roof. (My SWR is 1.2) You can see from my stats I am picking up flights routinely over 100miles away and some over 150mi so I think the set up is doing well. There is a 1090 site over 5 miles away and cell towers about 7 miles away so I don’t think interference is an issue.
A range of 100 to 150 miles is very good for 978 UAT. My setup maxes out at about 40 miles. Course that’s because I have a very poor UAT antenna – basically a 1/2 wave dipole inside the house.
Well done. That looks like very respectable coverage and range for a 978 UAT only system. Nice job on posting the details and the photos.
My typical 978 aircraft count here in NW Florida is between zero and 10 or so per day. That compares to my 1090 aircraft counts of around 1,500 per day. I see a great deal of light single traffic here with all the VFR traffic following the coast and I-10 east/west. Very little of that light single traffic is 978.
It’s impossible to measure exactly, but by watching my coverage, and coverage online with other sites, I would guess that probable less than 10% of the aircraft that could have opted for 978 UAT actually went that route. Almost all the typical light single engine aircraft passing through and around here upgraded to 1090 ads-b.
With FA, if you ever decide to add a second receiver for 1090, there are advantages of NOT putting it on the same FA account. Using separate site numbers for 1090 and 978 makes it much easier to see the polar plot coverage graphs for each. If you combine them, you can see the separate 978 counts in the stats, but NOT the 978 plots in the range plots.
Here’s one possible idea for a rainy day. Your 978 traffic will drop off to near zero when the weather is bad. As a “zero cost” fun project for a rainy day, you could flip your single receiver settings to use 1090 instead of 978 for just an hour or so. Your FA orange works fine for that, and your 978 antenna while not optimized for 1090 would work perfectly fine for a test. A quick 1090 test would give you a good range test and aircraft count that you could then compare to other stations in the area if you were interested.
I forgot to mention, below is probably the best possible 978 to 978 comparison test for your area. The station below has both 1090 and 978. Both of you list Addington Field as closest, but FA shows about 24 miles between you.
That station has two sites. The interesting one is the second site=245968. FA doesn’t seem to like linking directly to that, and seems to default to the first site, so you might have to manually select site=245968 from the orange drop down menu.
The other had:
Sunday = 31 UAT aircraft
Monday = 19 (so far)
Looking at the other station 1090 stats and range coverage, you can see it is impressive. That means most likely the 978 antenna and setup is probably also very good. It’s not a perfect comparison, but you can see that your 978 only performance appears better than the other station, which has an excellent 1090 record.
This other station in your area also gives a good example of how 1090/978 counts will be very different.
I am pretty sure I know Jeff at the other 978 site at the EKX airport. I have not talked to him about his site yet, but I am sure it is at the airport and probably fairly high on a building or tower. Plus he has zero obstructions where I have several hills around me that are about 200 ft higher than my antenna. So unfortunately it may not be a good comparison of site performance. I am going to post my SWR readings for my home brew SO-239 antenna. You will see that it is under 1.2 for both the 978 and 1090 frequencies…I am surprised that the 1090 was so low. It is trimmed to 70mm for the vertical…I think 80mm for the reflectors.
I always analyze my flights afterwards as well. No 978 MHz here in Europe but good you got it up and running 
