funny - i do side by side tests at the moment rpi2 with wifi dongle as near as possible to nooelec dongle and second rpi2 without any wifi => result here zero difference in range/messages/aircrafts between both units …
Interference is a very strange thing. Wires just need to be the exact length for coupling to happen. Just a bit shorter or longer and stuff does or doesn’t work.
For some reason your RPi0W and a prostick has some strange coupling going on. It doesn’t need to be a strong coupling but enough to couple microVolts of signal. I wonder why this doesn’t effect the RPi3 systems but only the RPi0W??
The Nintendo Switch had a wifi interference problem. One of the PCB traces on the controller was the exact length to couple with wifi signals. Their solution was to put a metal infused foam sticking thing on the trace. This shielded the trace to not cause more problems.
The picked a frequency for USB3 that happens to be a close enough multiple to wifi. This makes USB3 very prone to interfering with anything wifi.
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in addition it depends to distance and angle between wifi transmitter and receiver. maybe country dependend wifi channels could also play a role …
I don’t know if it is a shielded cable or not but it looks like its a reasonable quality. (see link at bottom) I’m still using it because my extension cable is only type-A to type-A. After suspecting it to be the culprit all along, I actually don’t think it is the cable any more. Before finding the fix, I created this monstrosity and got the same results. I know it is probably basically like a transmitter 
but I would have expected at least different results but I couldn’t tell any difference from the cable.
The only thing I can see that is different from everyone else is the el-cheapo dongle. It is also only R820T, not sure if that could be part of it? It works fine plugged directly into the RPi3 but I do think it doesn’t like the zero or vice versa. I’ll report back when my FA orange stick arrives with a comparison.
Now you tell me!!
Yea the RPi3 had no trouble either or are you referring to abcd567’s post? Are those metal cases? That might help my zero, I’ve also been meaning to try putting the dongle inside a metal canister.
Thanks to everyone for your help and ideas in solving this. If any one who has the right equipment is interested in testing what is going on here, here are the links to the dongle and the cable but you can probably find them closer to you.
Do you have any clip-on ferrite chokes? One or two on the USB cable could exonerate the cable it’s self.
I’m wondering if the 2.4GHz wifi is getting into the RTL. Maybe it’s desensitising the frontend or affecting other stages.
Wrapping the RTL in grounded alfoil would be an interesting experiment (I suppose you could wrap the USB cable in alfoil too).
Interesting, I’ve been running PiAware on a Pi Zero for a few months now so have just accepted the results as they are. May try the same image in a ‘spare’ Pi3 I have.
Us Pi users always have a ‘spare’ 
Geffers
UPDATE. [Long overdue]
Hi Everyone,
I just discovered this old thread and realised I never made good on my promise to update how things went once I got the FA orange dongle plugged into the PiZero. (I have been working on other projects this year and not been around here much)
As you can see below, I’m not having any problems with the orange dongle being plugged directly into the PiZero. I has been running 24/7 happily like this for about a year. (Yes, I never got around to making it look pretty either!) So, I think that points to the el-cheapo dongle/PiZero combo I was using as being the culprit.
Decent components, decent results!
Cheers.
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