I live around 12 miles from London Heathrow, lot of aircraft pass overhead into and out of Heathrow. I have a Pi Zero running an indoor setup with standard aerial in an upstairs bedroom by a West facing window.
Normally my daily aircraft count was in the 1700s but has been climbing, appreciate summer here but yesterday my stats showed 2000+ for Friday 8th June. Previous three Fridays were in 1900s and busier than other weekdays but yesterday surpassed all.
Been running consistently for over a year now and still find it fascinating - even took it to California on holiday few months back, that was interesting.
I wonder if cloud cover is a factor as well. We had some very cloudy days early this week, and the number of planes seen dropped substantially. Over here, and I guess in the UK too, the number of cloudy days increase in the winter months.
My all time records, for both planes and messages, happened in the summer months.
A lot must depend on the aerial used, mine is just the supplied antenna.
May try a portable device in the garden but then aerial will be at ground level. Realistically I am only interested in local traffic as I can see planes heading to and from Heathrow, soon as they drop to around 2000 feet approaching Heathrow I lose them.
I live relatively close to an airport, and my numbers have increased, too. Some of it will be holiday travel, and recovering from AirBerlin going out of business might have had an effect, I guess.
I stayed in a hotel close to LHR once, there really is a lot of air traffic, and a lot of it bigger intercontinental planes…
I just experienced a tremendous traffic ‘increase’. All it took was loosening up the N plug going to the FA antenna. I’ve not checked the innards of the antenna, but looks like tightening the plug too hard - a bad practice of mine, I’ll admit - causes a problem.
My ‘deluxe’ setup was ‘performing’ pretty much the same as my ‘poor man’s’ setup. Not a normal thing to expect.
Let’s see how long it’s going to be this way. If the performance drops again, I’ll have to open the antenna to check for bad/broken connection.
yes it appears to be strange, but the small gap between the center pins
is doing it. I was puzzled by the same effect.
Then I remembered the DIY filters been tuned by ‘adjusting the gap’.
I asked a friend, electronics technician and he said,
‘contrary to common belief, unlike electricity, the radio magnetic waves flow on the surface
and not at the core of the cable/pin’.
makes sense ?
ED1 : after posting went and tried on one of the dongles leaving ~1mm gap
as per image. for about 5 aircraft the message rate went from 4.2 to 6.4 or 6.5
so I guess it proves the point. surely for 50 aircraft ~400m/sec will jump to ~600 !
Correct, it’s called the skin effect. High frequency alternating current flows through the outer layer of the conductor. This is why efficient antennas use hollow conductors that are big in diameter.
But in this case, it may be mechanical rather than the skin effect, but I’m not complaining.
Looks like I’m back in the ‘big leagues’. I have not seen these numbers and distances since September 2017.
This time I have the other setup to compare. While before loosening up the plug the ‘deluxe’ setup was only 10-15% better than the ‘poor man’s’ setup, the difference now is up to 150%. Hard to believe, but true.
