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Install antenna at a location/height so that it is slightly above the height of surrounding objects like houses, buildings, tall trees etc, and can “see” the horizon in all or most directions.
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Use a good high gain Antenna like FlightAware 1090 MHz antenna.
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Keep the length of cable between antenna and receiver (dongle) as short as possible. Up to 15 feet of good coax (RG6 or LMR200 etc) is ok.
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Add a filter to eliminate strong Cell Phone signals in vicinity of 1090MHz. These signals saturate the front-end of the receiver (dongle) and weak signals from far-away planes are not processed, considerably reducing maximum range and plane count. Please see this post:
Do I Need A Filter? -
Have a benchmark of what maximum range you can get. Even with best setup, you cant pick aircrafts beyound 250~300 nm due to curvature of earth. This is in an ideal condition of level terrain. The profile of terrain may further reduce this limit. The terrain is different at different locations. For your aproximate coordinates (29.82, -95.63), and antenna height 20 ft above ground, I have plotted your max range curve. The blue curve is for planes flying at 40,000 feet, and yellow for planes at 10,000 feet.
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You can determine your max reach for your exact coordinates by the method given here:
What is the Maximum Range I can Get?
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