Interestingly enough, it seems that (somehow) placing the PCB in a metal enclosure dropped my message rate. I did reboot the pi after removing and replacing the dongle, however my settings remain the same. I’m using AGC and not a custom gain setting.
https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/N1AAE shows a drop in flights measured between 8PM and 9PM (EST) so I’m just going to assume that this has nothing to do with the enclosure but instead just a normal drop in data measured about this time of day.
Too tired to switch again. Time for another beer, then bed.
I’ll measure data for a few days and swap them back and see if anything noteworthy is measured. I just installed local graphs earlier today so not much (local) data collected for a good comparison.
As I said on another topic, the metal cases are not that needed.
The impedance on the RF side of the board being 50 ohm, it acts like a literal attenuator to the signals induced by RF noise (higher coupling impedance). Only the signals that come from the antenna (that is matched 50 ohm impedance) are passing unaffected.
A thermal pad on the receiver chip might help more, lowering the temperature it lowers the noise.
