Hi all
Could Anyone tell me which setting gain for piaware -fa currently on -10 (Max)
for the best gain setting
im using airspy at mo on 18 gain think its the best but takes alot longer to reset after setting change
unable to use optimizer.py only rssi
ive read i can have upto 3 whole pages of zero gain aircraft before they start the journey through minus i am getting 230nmi at present on just -18 on rssi
That sounds about right.
Most likely gain settings of 16 or 17 will produce basically identical coverage to your current setting of 18.
Did you try 17 yet? Maybe you’ll get a few more close in positions.
Anyway the difference will likely be very small.
Thanks for reply
i think im good for loca.l its distance could be a little more perhaps
i have done 17 18 and 19 but seems 18 is ok but will once we get a good high steady aircraft numbers i will do a gain test
regards john
Total Aircraft: 277 Messages: 2000.4/sec
Very nice coverage, John. It’ll be interesting to see what difference it makes to your stats page. You’re good already at around 1,000,000 messages/day and I’d expect that to increase. You may have mentioned it but I didn’t spot if you did - What aerial are you using?
Well i did a small improvement last week which proved positive
i currently use an amp in loft and
FlightAware 1090MHz ADS-B N-Type Antenna 26" - 5.5dBi @57m
i expect more improvements soon 
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When did you switch your station to the airspy?
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I think it was around the 15th may took couple days to get it settled in and the rest is history
i love this hobby
I guessed as much, slight improvement in the stats.
What LNA were you running again?
Somehow i would have expected somewhat more of an improvement but the stats were very nice even before the change.
Can you try a gain of 16 for a day or two? 
57M ASL or AGL? If the latter, wow! 
That would equate to 6db drop in gain 
i will drop it just for you at midnight 
for 24 hours depending on the result 
i may keep it for another 24 hours
If you are using the My ADS-B page to see the numbers, keep in mind that it displays UTC, not local time.
GMT BST UTC yes your right 11 pm but i have already altered it as i was curious so start when you like gain is 16 and i have noticed more aircraft and more messages
Which gain do you recommend me to use in order to get the most of long range planes?
Results below. Thank you!
===Totals===
Gain, Messages, Positions, Aircraft
49.6 103412 15179 148
48.0 106146 15777 153
44.5 110481 16314 156
43.9 110387 16691 155
43.4 111825 16958 156
42.1 116360 17418 160
40.2 116501 17243 155
38.6 116962 17155 156
37.2 116489 17096 156
36.4 115841 16812 152
33.8 118472 17176 152
32.8 120323 17190 156
29.7 123518 17459 156
28.0 117627 16635 152
25.4 115798 16725 155
22.9 122650 17742 159
20.7 117229 17003 157
I don’t like the gain optimization scripts at all.
I’d recommend reading the first two posts of this thread.
As you can see if you read more of the thread there are of course more opinions but the first two posts is how i would recommend to adjust gain.
Also it looks like you used the wrong gain optimization script because the numbers should change much more over that range of gain.
When changing the gain make sure you use the correct method depending on your system.
(For Beginners - How to Set / Change Gain)
Thanks for the quick reply.
Indeed I tried this gain script to have additional information of my system.
For the last 24h/48h I got around 3% messages > -3dbFS. According to your second post of this thread I should increase the gain and aim to the 5% correct? My main aim is to increase as much as possible the long distant planes around my station. (I do not live near an airport)
Increase it one notch.
What is your current gain at?
28dB… I’m using FA blue stick + FA antenna without any LNA
The blue stick has an builtin LNA so something around that value is expected with a good antenna.
Anyway try 30 (29.7) then :).
That’s the next step up.
After that you can also try 33 and 34 but i doubt it’s gonna improve much even for long range.
Many thanks for the tips, I’ll try and will report back my results…
Now I got around 4.5% with the gain set to 31dB…
Range seems to improved a bit (~5%).