Which Flightfeeder is most suitable for MLAT?
Ie. which FF has the maximum range of reception. One person has an interest in such a receiver.
He can install the receiver in a very interesting place.
Theoretically, the aircraft at an altitude of 10 km will be visible at a distance of 417 km.
Therefore, if the best receiver for sensitivity is FlightFeeder G6 (7.8.8), then I will give him the receiver that I have at the time.
But if the best is a modern FlightFeeder model with LCD, then he will order himself a free receiver.
I read on one forum that modern FlightFeeder models have a bad antenna and a low sensitivity Mode-S Beast GPS V2.40.
Yes, you can give him your feeder, but he can apply for one himself https://flightaware.com/adsb/request
Keep in mind that MLAT needs 4 feeders or more to get better results.
Only one will not provide a sufficient improvement.
…mountains, mountains and mountains.
You can see that the station located in this place has a critical value.
This is “The Fourth station” for most of the surface of this part of the sea.
Therefore, the important question is which generation of stations (with the antenna and without cable ) has the best sensitivity.
Ie what station can provide the greatest coverage in these conditions.
I have the LCD model, and the issue is not “which one is better” but how you configure it’s gain. Mine came defaulted on AGC (Automatic Gain Control" and it was working, but just not well enough. On the LCD, radio tab, I could see lots of clipped messages, so I have lowered the gain (from the touch screen LCD) until the number of decoded messages per second was maximum. In my area, that meant a gain of 33dB (AGC bumps it to over 45dB).
I have added a preamplifier with two SAW filters to cut off some more interference (cell towers) and because of added gain of the preamp, I had to lower again the receiver’s gain - now I am at 8dB.Number of the decoded signals raised again.
PS: From my experience, I can tell that the FA antenna is one of the best one you can have. He will receive an antenna with the new FlightFeeder, and a filter to put in front of the receiver.
Please also note that there are two models of FlightFeeders in production. The blue model is currently being shipped in most of Europe and Asia. External filters are are not compatible with the blue model.
I have fa orange receiver which has a fa pro stick inside it. The blue version 10 has beast board inside it. So its antenna is also special having a gps circuit inside it whether mine is a dipole. The sampling rate is the difference between them and that’s also very low. After having detail conversation and analysis of results with other feeders here, I can say fa prostick or prostick plus based receivers are doing better regarding sensitivity and coverage. One very big plus point of orange feeder is its radio can be replaced easily as prosticks are available in market and those are affordable too. But not the beast boards.
So I do not think there can be interference at this point. There are bad reception centers due to the surrounding rocks and mountains.
I saw the negative reviews about the FA antenna, which comes with blue FlightFeeder receiver (with GPS). By the way, their ideal - the Radial A10-1090 ADSB antenna 1065-1134 MHz Vertical antenna A10-1090 : Radial :
Yes,line of sight is a problem…but the version 10 antennas(white) aren’t manufactured by fa but jetvision. The fa dipole antenna(rifle green) that am using now is considered to be the best right now, and the prosticks of both versions already became popular because they are really good. My antenna is just 23ft high now,has obstacles such as big tress around,but still I get coverage of 200 nm in average. This Russian and another Bulgarian antenna I heard about is good, but not available like the fa antenna.
After the Malaysian plane was downed with a military missile, all the international traffic was routed “around” Ukraine hot zone, trough Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey airspace, the Black Sea traffic is not that large in numbers, not anymore. Just Russian companies dare to fly trough the North of Black Sea.
You would have to mount at a very high altitude to be able to “see” all the way to south of the Black Sea. I would say something like 1000 meters, based on this:
The usual range of reception is about 400-450 km. For my FlightFeeder G6.
Therefore, I’m afraid that the Blue FlightFeeder (with GPS) receiver has the worst range.
From 1000 meters altitude you should be able to receive from a plane at 30000 feet, 520 km away.
If your altitude is 300 meters, the limit reduces to 466km.
This pic is maybe clearer - the actual ATC control zones and how far you would need to be able to “reach”.
The first two months I experienced a receiver near the sea shore. Antenna height above sea level is not more than 15 meters.
In 2017, near this place, this station was installed - https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/olgmsg
I think that this FF-6 receiver is better than FF-7 GPS receiver for long-range radio reception. But I’m interested in MLAT in this direction. And I do not know if the GPS receiver is more necessary for this.
In this place is a very remarkable flat landscape and a phenomenally low amount of rainfall.
If the photographer would have taken photos from this roof towards the left, there would be a view of these antennas - Pluton (complex) - Wikipedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/ADU-1000-4.jpg/640px-ADU-1000-4.jpg
