Newbie and just read this post. Took one of the three suggestions and look what happened:
ADSB coverage increase over 3 days following a simple forum thread suggestion. Almost 3 times the planes per day; improved the coverage area significantly. (I have coverage maps for the 3 days.)
Located upstairs and on back porch with antenna magnetically sitting on big steel cookie tin…ignore my down time for a couple of days when Comcast put in new router and changed my SSID. Forgot to update the pi on the outside back porch.
Great observation and confusing I admit. The two screenshot show two different kinds of information. Couldn’t fit the data I wanted in one screenshot since 9.7 inch ipad only sees so much data at a time.
First important data is the coverage area graph. I have 3 days worth of those as I tried steel can variations on three different days (24 hour periods). The last 24 hour period is shown and is the one with big cookie tin.
Second screen shot is to show a three of the days worth of actual flights seen.
Two screenshots together shows significantly increased coverage area and significantly increased flights in 24 hour period.
Just re-read this thread looking at all of it rather than the quick fix with cookie tin (which I’m very happy about). I just minutes ago ordered a 25’ powered usb extension to move my tiny (see photo) antenna higher on the roof for better line of sight. After reading about ‘losses based on cable length’ issues above, thinking that additional length, even though powered off the USB, will cause more signal loss than the additional coverage from new location will gain. What say you oh wizards of the forum? Let me add please and thank you to this post.
As for MLAT issues with long USB cable, I already get almost zero MLAT locations now even though MLAT is enabled. That’s another issue for another day.
It is a safe and reliable way of powering the Pi over more than 100 metres.
The data can be Wi-Fi or Ethernet and you don’t have any of the problems of long usb cables.
Looking at the other receivers nearby your location they are getting approximately 15% of aircraft from MLAT so you are missing out on a lot of aircraft you could be reporting.
I know my MLAT sucks but haven’t looked into it yet. Suggestion from help team is to do a rebuild. I’m thinking they are correct since I had a couple of initial install issues. However, my area is pretty well covered by other devices so my lack of MLAT positions is not a real issue to FA.
On your POE suggestion, very interesting. Would you have an example of someone who has done it? My physical layout is vanilla - pi to power and antenna to Pi USB and Wi-Fi. Can Pi recieve it’s power from a USB source instead of it’s built-in power supply?
This is all you need to power the Pi over PoE. There are diagrams on that page to show how it works.
You can run the Ethernet to your router or continue to use WiFi and only use the PoE for power to the Pi.
Put an antenna outside as high as practicable will certainly help.
As @abcd567 quite correctly says at every opportunity just load the Flightaware piaware image, add your WiFi credentials if you want WiFi, and add the Unique Identifier for your current receiver. I suggest you use another microSD card so you can return to the existing one if you stuff it up.
Instructions are here. and it should take less than 30 minutes from start to end.
For most receivers FA is not particularly concerned in the more densely populated receivers but like a lot of contributors on this discussion board I try improve my contribution. My personal aim is to maximize my coverage area whilst some others try to maximize their message count. Have you decided what you want to achieve?
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.
Use a good high gain Antenna like FlightAware 1090 MHz antenna.
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.
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.
Just got started with a Pro Stick Plus a few days ago and I’m thinking of building a ‘Spider’ antenna. Like you I’m an apartment dweller and the building blocks half the sky. Unlike you I’m on the top floor so it will be fairly easy to mount the antenna above the roof line.
My question for you is - Is the connector just below the ground plane legs necessary or could the legs be installed at the end of a 5 metre piece of coax?
Thanks for all your tutorial posts. I’ve already changed the range rings as per your Tweaks thread.
Thanks for the quick reply, I should have said I was thinking of the ‘Quick Spider’. I had read that thread and while there’s no SO239 Connector the pictures show a F type Barrel Connector (female to female) about 10cm below the legs.
I was thinking that was just for convenience of handling/mounting but wanted to make sure that leaving it out wouldn’t degrade reception?
Connectors of a coax cable should ideally behave just like the cable but they still reduce the signal a bit. So using one connector less is no problem and even improves reception a tiny bit.
I have a bunch of coax leftover from a satellite dish that I planning on using. I’m assuming that it’s RG6 but will have to check as it stored in a friends garage (no room in my apartment). The only thing I should have to buy is a F Type Female to SMA Male Plug Connector - https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01GNKSZ02
I’ll mount it at the top of 10’ 2x4 secured to a balcony railing. The roof is a flat so I should get a good view of the entire sky.
