My Flightaware Pro stick died a little while back (using a mobile antenna with basic range). With a renewed approach, I have a new box that I’m looking to configure and will buy the Pro Plus stick as a replacement. I can always go back to the mobile antenna to achieve ‘ok’ coverage but I (In Australia) have an unused TV satelitte dish using coax mounted to my roof, is there benefit in trying to repurpose this equipment to achieve better coverage?
It depends what you are trying to achieve.
Most simply, plugging a 1090MHz receiver into the Sat wall socket won’t give you anything.
Mounting an external antenna and using the Sat coax will be a lot better than your indoor antenna.
Replacing the LNB (the bit at the dish’s focal point) with a 1090MHz antenna will give you a highly directional ‘antenna system’ that’s probably not very useful.
That dish is high gain at it’s design freq (~10GHz), but not much better than a yagi’s reflector at 1.1GHz
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If you are not using the Sat dish, that could be a possible mounting location for a ADS-B 1090MHz antenna. Bonus points and better all around reception if you can use the Sat dish post as a support to put your new antenna up higher than your roof to get better reception in all directions. The old coax might work, though it might not be in great shape after the years outside. Be sure to wrap the connections with waterproof tape to keep out the rain and weather. Have fun improving your site.
You know, that might be a way of getting an outdoor 1090 MHz antenna, where antennas are generally banned. Specifically, since satellite dishes are given a blanket approval by HOAs – get a satellite dish for a month or so, then cancel the contract and replace it with a 1090 MHz antenna. Tricky!
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Ask around in your HOA or find a neighbor that is no longer using their antenna and they switched to cable or just internet. You primarily need the mount, but hanging the old dish provides cover for the your real reason. If asked about the vertical antenna, mention it provides signal phasing correction for better reception. Still bring the dish cable underground or into the house so the trickery works. Be sure to aim the antenna tilted back and tilted a bit ease or west of South, so it looks like it is actually pointing at a satellite.
Currently living in an HOA myself and working my own subterfuge to improve reception. Kinda hard to hide the 44 inch antenna and then get the signal into the house. Probably could reactivate my Ham license and put up a 40’ tower, but that has it’s own set of problems.
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I expect the coax left behind on the dish is 75 ohm cable. Impedance mismatch right from the git go.
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That’s true, it’ll be RG6.
The OP is currently running an indoor mobile (mag base?) antenna.
A better antenna mounted significantly higher will easily compensate for an impedance mismatch.
One thing worth remembering is the R820T was designed primeraly for TV reception which does use 75 Ω. (the input impedence of the dongle as seen at the connector depends on the PCB design).
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