I have 2 setups at my house. Pihole1 is in the front of the house, has an obstructed view, and the cable runs into a room with a ton of electronics (the 1066 spike). Runs UF. Pihole1 runs 240 cable.
Everything else is the same - both with FA pro 1090 sticks. Bias t. Outdoor uputronics 1090 LNA. Same 1090 FA antenna.
Waiting for more UF cable to restring pihole2 to see what the curve looks like with that change.
Just thought it was interesting to share.
edit – both are high quality cables about the same length (30’, so 10-ish meters…) 240 directly from flightaware. And UF is from… Oh geez, I forgot the same, a good US manufacturer who will cut it to length and put on the correct ends. Maybe they’re in Michigan?
There is something else going on at your site. The cheapest coax you are likely to find won’t produce 25dB attenuation over 10m.
The Pro Stick has a 20dB amp built in. Adding the uptronics amp in line with a short cable between them (?) will guarantee you are overloading the receiver.
they are masthead now. my two setups are now the same – flightaware 1090 antenna → uputronics LNA → 400uf cable →inside → bias t →FA pro blue.
With my better view setup I’m now routinely getting 75+ planes (was 50-ish before) and 400 msgs/sec for times. but the msgs per second now seem about 100 higher on average than before.
my previous setup was 1090 antenna →240 cable →inside →rtlsdr wideband LNA →bias t →fa blue barrel filter → FA pro stick.
I’d say a probably have 25% improvement in both # of plane and messages, but I’ll need to watch the data over weeks since I’ve been monkeying with it for the last month and making the improvements in steps.
The max seen line on the tar1090 graph is usually sitting between 30k-40k altitude so I think i’m now catching the vast majority of the planes that are “seeable” from my location.
First - please don’t leave off the cables prefix, it’s the most important designator. "240 could refer to: RG240, LMR240, TS240, LL240, LLC240, C240, CC240 and probably others. It just makes you post hard to read.
Based on the names you’ve given your Pis, they are both running Pihole. Depending on the network traffic (CPU load), the other processes the Pi is running may be taking the top off your ADSB stats.
There is a “max seen graph” in tar1090?
There are two “blue filters” (light and dark). What device are you using for your spectral power plots, and are you measuring the full cable assembly?
If so, the 880MHz spike suggests you are using the light-blue filter.
Given the high gain you have with two amps, any attenuation your filter adds will probably help your performance. Having said that, the uptronics amp is a broadband device, so adding a filter before the LNA will help keep unwanted signals from being amplified.
I still think you have too much gain in your system.
One of my sites uses the RTL-Blog V3 with matching 1090LNA. The V3 has no amp and even RTL-Blog think the amp has too much gain when not mounted at masthead - they say it was designed on the assumption you’d have at least 3dB cable losses.
My amp is at the bottom of the feeder and after some trials, found I got the highest performance with an 8dB attenuator between between the amp and dongle.
Your “LMR-400-UF plot” shows a 15db increase in max level - there was definitely something broken with your old cable.
