Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread

[Feek]

Thank you. Recommendation of where to buy the LNA? Presume to get the ADSB one

I'm in a rubbish signal area at the moment so can't easily search but the exact model LNA is linked from that previous article along with the only place you can buy it, which is direct from RTL-SDR themselves.

 

[NLPD1S]

@NLPD1S
Sorry for the delay in replying, I've had a lot going on recently which has kept me from the forums.

No problem, kind of the same situation over here, soooo busy.

@NLPD1S
That looks very good and I'm really keen to see what your results are like. If it's possible, it would be awesome if I could add your site to my essexradar VRS instance as that'll give me fantastic coverage over to the east as well. Are you likely to have spare bandwidth, do you reckon that's possible?

Of course that's possible, there is not much bandwidth involved in this kind of data sharing and my internet upstream is 20Mbps, so no problem. Would love to form some sort of alliance.

@NLPD1S
To answer your questions as best I can. I don't know what make the PoE module is, it's a generic cheap model that was given to me by a friend. I will look when I'm home (as I'm on holiday in GU-Land right now) and see if it's got any labels on it but it works and it works well. I'm feeding the 9V output into a £1 DC-DC voltage converter from eBay which I've set to around 5.2v and I feed that into the Pi. I've soldered a wire from the 5v GPIO pins to the bias-tee injector which is what's powering the RTL-SDR LNA.

If you can use a Pi4 then absolutely you should go for it. It can handle the Airspy at 20MHz which is better than the 12MHz maximum you'll get with a Pi3B+
Personally, I'm not a fan of the Uputronics LNA because I've seen how badly 2m can totally kill the front end. I'd go with the RTL-SDR LNA every time.

As for the LNA; it will be Cavity filter+RTL-SDR Wideband LNA which I both have laying around. I intended to feed it separately, but the 5v GPIO is a more convenient solution.
The Airspy Mini is in backorder, Pi 4 (2GB)+Sandisk High Endurance 32GB card are on their way..

 

[Feek]

Of course that's possible, there is not much bandwidth involved in this kind of data sharing and my internet upstream is 20Mbps, so no problem. Would love to form some sort of alliance.

Great - Thanks. We could even do it now on your current setup if you like.

As for the LNA; it will be Cavity filter+RTL-SDR Wideband LNA which I both have laying around. I intended to feed it separately, but the 5v GPIO is a more convenient solution.

Yeah, I've spotted your posts on the FA forums as well so have seen what you're doing. I don't know if you've seen my latest on FA but after my comments above, I've found my CPU is throttling due to under voltage so something is breaking down up there. I'm going to switch to doing it properly with a decent PoE injector and PoE HAT. I'll swap to the Pi4 at the same time.

 

[Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one]

Just ordered the RTL-SDR Blog ADS-B Triple Filtered LNA for £25 delivered

 

[Feek]

Good job!

 

[NLPD1S]

Great - Thanks. We could even do it now on your current setup if you like

You will have to help me a little, I'll send you a PM.

I've found my CPU is throttling due to under voltage so something is breaking down up there. I'm going to switch to doing it properly with a decent PoE injector and PoE HAT. I'll swap to the Pi4 at the same time.

Hmmz The Pi4 seems quite picky about power (drops). As for I have read, the PoE HAT isn't that stable, too.
Perhaps you could use a LM1084 to regulate the power to a stable 5.2V?
Basically it is the same as the 78XX series regulator but a bit more beefy (5A).

EDIT: @Feek I am not allowed to send you a PM, could you send me a PM?

 

[Snaggle]

could this be done with a Rsp1a ?

 

[Feek]

I am not allowed to send you a PM, could you send me a PM?

Have done..

could this be done with a Rsp1a ?

I've heard of people doing it with a Zero although I've not had much success with that myself which I put down to being in a very high signal area. It's worth a try.

 

[andy_mk3]

Hi all, just got my receiver set up, using a Flightaware Pro Plus stick along with the FA antenna. Running FR24feeder, dump1090 and piaware in docker (currently on an old laptop but will be moved to my server once my server is moved to the room where the aerial cable is). Quite happy with the range I'm getting (224nm). Got quite a block to the East as my aerial is on the side of the house, and I don't have ladders quite tall enough to clear the roof, but I am planning on getting a longer pole to push the antenna above roof level.



Any other things you guys recommend running? Would be interested to know.

 

[Feek]

That's nice coverage north to south.

Last weekend I did my final planned upgrade. I've replaced my aerial with one from Jetvision and moved it to the top of my new Hexbeam so it's effectively 11ft higher than it was previously and is now 44ft AGL. I also replaced the Pi3B+ with a Pi4 which allowed me to increase the sample rate from 12MHz to 20MHz. The latest updates to the Airspy software make a big difference as well and I've seen message rates peak slightly above 2,700/second!

Here's the live view, here are the graphs and here's the daily heatmap plots. Of course, it feeds into Essex Radar (link in signature).

 

[neodude]

Nice

 

[andy_mk3]

That is one immense antenna!

 

[Feek]

This sort of thing is cool - I spotted this perfect circle on the heatmap from today.



Investigation showed that it's a NATO E-3A Sentry, otherwise known as an AWACS aircraft.

 

[Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one]

Does the HEX when I use not affect the ADSB?
Also what antenna ADSB wise have you fitted?

 

[Feek]

Does the HEX when I use not affect the ADSB?

Not in the slightest, I can transmit at full power on any of the seven bands and it's perfectly fine.

Also what antenna ADSB wise have you fitted?

It's this one from Jetvision.

There's a complete breakdown of every single piece of hardware in use from the aerial to the PoE injector on this page on my site.

 

[Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one]

Not in the slightest, I can transmit at full power on any of the seven bands and it's perfectly fine.


It's this one from Jetvision.

There's a complete breakdown of every single piece of hardware in use from the aerial to the PoE injector on this page on my site.

Really nice write up. That’s pretty impressive. I’ve got some that cable here. Bought for a project and never bothered. N and SMA ends. Very impressive the range and hits your getting.

 

[Feek]

It's been fascinating to watch and see how the traffic levels have been dropping over the last few days. Yesterday was very low, the lowest I've seen for a long time and today I'm seeing 20% fewer aircraft than yesterday.



My main VRS instance (link in sig) still shows quite a few aircraft but my own tracker, when viewed by itself really shows the lack of aircraft compared to normal.

 

[Scuzi]

It's been fascinating to watch and see how the traffic levels have been dropping over the last few days. Yesterday was very low, the lowest I've seen for a long time and today I'm seeing 20% fewer aircraft than yesterday.

My main VRS instance (link in sig) still shows quite a few aircraft but my own tracker, when viewed by itself really shows the lack of aircraft compared to normal.

Traffic is excepted to drop to 10% of normal levels for this time of year. 90% of flights not operating.

 

[Feek]

Thanks @Scuzi, do you reckon it'll just be a slow drop over the next few days? I still saw 2,500 aircraft over the course of the day yesterday but that's well down on the normal 3,000+ I see here.

Unrelated, LTNS squire - You alright?

 

[andy_mk3]

That's a pretty crazy drop in traffic right there.