Upgraded to ProStick w/Filter - UUGE Performance Drop!

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
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I decided to upgrade my setup by purchasing the ProStick and accompanying filter, expecting better results than from my standard NooElec dongle. However, the exact opposite occurred; my setup actually experienced a performance drop across the board. I’ve tried various gain settings to no avail, and am coming to y’all for some advice. Graphs are at a 9 day scale.

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My guess is the cable is the culprit. Antenna, filter, and dongle are all Flightaware products. Here’s the link to the cable.

Completely unrelated but complicating things nonetheless is my departure to basic training next week. That’s why I’m hoping this performance drop is something that can be easily fixed through the command line. I really do not want to purchase additional hardware.

Here’s the current setup:

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And here’s the webmap.

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sure you didn’t get a RP-SMA?

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There’s your problem.

TP-LINK TL-ANT24PT3 3m/10ft N Male to RP-SMA Male Pigtail Cable

You got the wrong connector. There’s a quick dirty workaround to cut a small piece of coax conductor and shove it in the receptacle turning that into a SMA male.

Have fun at basic! It’ll suck at first but it gets better and more fun…

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Here is a picture showing difference between SMA and RP-SMA

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7625/26802820521_5fd1bae4c0_o.jpg

Here is an image showing the quick dirty workaround :slight_smile:

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And thanks in advance for your upcoming service.

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Thanks for the advice!

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Does the ProStick have a temperature compensated oscillator, similar to:

amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2 … 1_1&sr=8-1

I was assuming it does, but maybe I’m wrong? Or does it not really make much of a difference for ADS-B applications?

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It doesn’t have a TCXO and you don’t need one for ADS-B; 100ppm at 1090MHz is 109kHz, but the ADS-B signal is 2000kHz+ wide.

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Would there be another reason that the ProStick would have poor performance at high-temperatures? (worse than just a standard R820T2 chip?

I still need to do some more testing, but I am getting the feeling that its not as good as another R820T2 dongle I have, which has an aluminum case - better heat dissipation.

This is outside, in Phoenix… Like I said, I need to do a controlled test before I can say for sure…

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I doubt it’s the crystal; even a 100 degree temperature swing might give you a change of only 30-50ppm which is not much when it comes to ADS-B. It’s quite possible there’s something else that’s unhappy with high temperatures, I’d guess in the RF frontend somewhere.

You can compensate for the crystal offset at a particular temperature via the --ppm parameter. The main thing with TCXO vs uncompensated crystals is just that the offset of a TCXO will not move much with temperature.