Which one is the best antenna?

THNX for your kind reaction Sir,
maybe some more info on present situation

  • directly under this antenna is a cheap Chinese inline SAT amplifier 950-2100 MHz ($7)
  • after this amplifier is 25m good quality TV coax 75 Ohm
  • inside the house a cheap Chinese ceramic SAW filter mounted in a old inline amplifier case
  • my receiver is RTL-SDR V3 on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running FA software
    you can look at it live 24/7/365 on http://pa0ebc.nl:8080/
    Hans Gort PA0EBC
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Has anyone seen this antenna in the size of a broom stick? 8.5dBi is this really possible?

Considered ordering it just to try it out, but it turns out that the shipping cost was higher than the cost of the antenna. 50+ euro for the shipping was a bit too steep for me…

Have you checked if you can source it locally? Worldwide Distributors - Pimoroni

I’ve contacted a couple of resellers here in Sweden. Hopefully they can help me out.
This antenna begs to be tested and compared to the FA-antenna…

Keep in mind there’s usually a directionality-vs-gain tradeoff to make:

Vertical beam width: 9°

This is quite narrow; at 50km range, the top of the beam would only reach somewhere around 13k ft. (the “beam” is a fuzzy concept; this will be the -3dB point)

Of course you want the most gain for the aircraft closest to the horizon, but since you can already get out to the radio horizon with less gain, I’m not sure that more gain with a narrow beam is what you need here.

If you have achieved already the max range based on your position, this antenna will not increase it.

Maybe the message rate will be different/higher

My station is not close to any major airports and have relatively few aircrafts passing by closer than 80 km. The bulk of my messages comes from aircrafts pretty far away:
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So it may give me some advantage. I currently have one of the Slovakian antennas on my roof. It performs slightly better than the FA-antenna on more distant aircrafts.
And since I love to try new stuff out I hope that one of the local distributors can help me out with a decent price for the antenna.

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Another 9 dBi Antenna

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I use the DPD antennas for 1090Mhz and 978Mhz. They are great, however, I am not sure they are worth the extra money, compared to the FA Antennas(I also have both FA models).

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE LARGER SIZE
CLICK AGAIN TO SEE FULL SIZE

I have now three antennas. One individually built hy an enthusiast, he stated 3.8dBi. Compared to the Jetvision with 5dBi it is almost the same.

And i have a different one which states “6dBi” which has a 15% less performance than the other two.

So it’s always an idea to compare the devices not only by the values in the advertisement.

It’s interesting that they state this gain but the antenna is only 60cm in size, so the same as FA/Jetvision, while the other one i linked above with 8.5dBi is 120 cm in size.

Looks like “size doesn’t matter” :smiley: :smiley:

Another 9 dBi antenna

 

A 12 dB antenna :wink:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000478730332.html

This looks exactly like the one 120cm version i’ve posted above

Look at the prices the sellers at Aliexpress are charging for Flightaware stuff :hot_face:

https://m.aliexpress.com/wholesale/Flightaware.html?channel=direct&keywords=Flightaware

That antenna is garbage. I have that and also prototyped a few others from China (Alibaba) and none of them are worth a damn. I have that exact strip antenna on order only because it’s little brother looked excellent on the VNA. Funny how they just list 12DB with no reference - typical BS advertising, but was cheap enough to add to the collection.

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Well $12 for 12 dB, i.e. $1/dB :wink: .

I also have its little brother, worked good, for about a year, but recently I have replaced it first by DIY V-Stub on mag-mount and later by DIY QuickSpider with V-Stub, both performed much better.

Will order the $12 one now, just to satisfy urge to find out how good/bad it is.

Unfortunately, and as neat as both of those designs are with the DIY antenna, they are not for outdoor use. My goal is to do another side-by-side antenna shootout, but the caveat is that they need to be able to withstand some weather. Jury is out on these strip antenna, but I’m curious regardless.

There is just too much involved when you start talking about maximizing an indoor or otherwise obfuscated installations to get into. Same goes for any DIY antenna setup - as fine as they may work - there are simply too many variables to consider. (same could actually be said for any installation/location, but need to draw the line somewhere for testing purposes)

Do you have a comparison against the FA Antenna on these?

I also have the DPD antennas for 1090Mhz and 978MHz, and one of their omni VHF and UHF(118-137, 138-140, 225-400 MHz) Airband antennas, that I use for ACARS, VD2L, Airband, and other stuff.

They work great, are sturdy, and I think they are worth the money.

I have a FlightAware ADSB as well(was my first dedicated adsb antenna), that I use as a backup and for testing config changes, and an active diapason adsb for playing with too.