That's a pretty standard technique. Usually paralleled at 3nm or 5nm apart depending on the separation requirement. You'll see it loads in and around the SE as it's needed to fit all the planes in the available airspace.
Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread
- Thread starter leaskovski
- Start date
That's a pretty standard technique. Usually paralleled at 3nm or 5nm apart depending on the separation requirement. You'll see it loads in and around the SE as it's needed to fit all the planes in the available airspace.
Commissario
Right then. Next stage is complete. I have a Moonraker Radar-110 aerial outside at about 27' AGL and now I'm getting a few more aircraft on the plot.
176 aircraft here and that's not even at a busy time. Each ring is equal to 50nm range.
Next step is to get the pre-amp/filter mounted at the masthead. I'm using Ecoflex 15 cable therefore I don't really have much coax loss (I estimate around 1.2dB) so I don't think it'll make much difference but it's good to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system.
176 aircraft here and that's not even at a busy time. Each ring is equal to 50nm range.
Next step is to get the pre-amp/filter mounted at the masthead. I'm using Ecoflex 15 cable therefore I don't really have much coax loss (I estimate around 1.2dB) so I don't think it'll make much difference but it's good to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a system.
Man of Honour
Commissario
Nope, it's on a 20ft pole mounted on the side of the house. I think the base of the pole is about 7ft above the ground.
Soldato
Showing my age, but too many years ago, we used these....
Soldato
Well Feek you inspired me to get a setup going. Have only received the NooElec NESDR SMArt, a 1m USB extension cable and a short N type M to SMA male coax cable as of yet, waiting on the band pass filter and antenna on Monday.
Looking forward to seeing what I can pick up!
Looking forward to seeing what I can pick up!
Commissario
Oh jolly good Vader. What aerial and filter are you getting? Bear in mind that if you have a long coax run that it's potentially quite lossy. I had 15m of RG213 which gave me over 4dB loss which is over 60% of the signal!
Soldato
I just decided to get the basic flight aware one and the flight aware antenna
Just as a basic trial run really, I only bought a 2m length of coax to get myself setup with the antenna > receiver to see how it looks.
I heard about the losses involved with longer cable runs! was rather surprised. I might end up hooking up a raspberry pi close to the antenna and running a lan cable from there to minimize losses.
Just as a basic trial run really, I only bought a 2m length of coax to get myself setup with the antenna > receiver to see how it looks.
I heard about the losses involved with longer cable runs! was rather surprised. I might end up hooking up a raspberry pi close to the antenna and running a lan cable from there to minimize losses.
Soldato
Well it's up and running, but I need to read up and have a play. Not getting terribly good results, but then the antenna is currently just mounted in the window.
I'm probably in a poor spot geographically (large hills to the East, West and North. The Antenna is in a small window pointing South West , so I'm picking up High Altitude planes out to about 50NM, maximum, which isn't great
But it was fun, I'll be borrowing a PI off a friend and setting up PIaware at some point, but for the moment, will just be running dump1090 Windows version with Virtual Radar Server.
I'm probably in a poor spot geographically (large hills to the East, West and North. The Antenna is in a small window pointing South West , so I'm picking up High Altitude planes out to about 50NM, maximum, which isn't great
But it was fun, I'll be borrowing a PI off a friend and setting up PIaware at some point, but for the moment, will just be running dump1090 Windows version with Virtual Radar Server.
Commissario
It may just be down to your location. Have a look at http://www.heywhatsthat.com/. Click on New panorama, enter your lat/long and aerial height then give your plot a title and hit Submit request. When the advert clears, zoom out the map and click on Up in the Air to see a couple of radial rings showing predicted ranges for FL100 and FL300. I found it to be really quite accurate for my setup here.
I got a few spare parts from doing this before. Not sure what stick to use as there is a newer one out.
My parts lists that I've here
Raspberry Pi 2
Maplins 2.1A PSU
Uptronics 1090Mhz ADS-B Filtered Preamp
Collinear antenna https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291929606718
1m RG59 SMA Ends
I've ran Piaware and the FR24 feed in the past.
A friend made a POE kit for the Pi called PiCAT5. Sadly I've not had much time to test it. Plan to use it again on this rebuild.
Need sort what dongle I'm going to run.
I'd also like to get an FM Stopper https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282228679500
My parts lists that I've here
Raspberry Pi 2
Maplins 2.1A PSU
Uptronics 1090Mhz ADS-B Filtered Preamp
Collinear antenna https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291929606718
1m RG59 SMA Ends
I've ran Piaware and the FR24 feed in the past.
A friend made a POE kit for the Pi called PiCAT5. Sadly I've not had much time to test it. Plan to use it again on this rebuild.
Need sort what dongle I'm going to run.
I'd also like to get an FM Stopper https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282228679500
Soldato
Cheers Feek, I think it's simply down to Antenna location, it is obstructed by houses across the street and has no direct line of site to any horizon.
It'll be interesting to see what improvements there will be once I get it up higher.
Soldato
What's the benefit of doing this with RasPi over just watching the flightradar website?
Commissario
Dongle - Grab an RTL-SDR V.3. Works really well and has bias tee if you need it. Or even just a £8 cheapie dongle from eBay will work.
If you've got the Uputronics preamp/filter, don't even consider that "FM blocker". You've already got a bandpass filter in the Uputronics kit.
Soldato
No benefit, I thought it was a fun little project to try it out. Plus you can contribute to websites such as Flightradar
Commissario
You can contribute to a number of online sites. FR24 and FlightAware give premium memberships for free to people who feed them data.
It's a fun geeky project.
It's a bit competitive to build a decent setup and watch yourself climb the league table.
There's no delay like the online sites enforce.
It's educational. I've learnt a lot more about the Pi doing this.
And for me - it's something else to do with radio. I love radio!
It's a fun geeky project.
It's a bit competitive to build a decent setup and watch yourself climb the league table.
There's no delay like the online sites enforce.
It's educational. I've learnt a lot more about the Pi doing this.
And for me - it's something else to do with radio. I love radio!
It only has a SAW filter as an LNA.
This is the new stick I'm thinking of maybe http://www.radioforeveryone.com/p/review-flightaware-pro-stick-plus-nov.html?m=1
I've some cheap ones here.
Commissario
The Pro Stick Plus comes with an amplifier and bandpass filter built in (probably the same SAW filter as the Uputronics) and so if you ever want to use it for anything other than ADS-B, you're knackered. Apart from which, you've got an amplifier and filter already. I recommend the RTL-SDR Blog R820T2 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software Defined Radio (Dongle Only), which you can find here. Or there's this one which comes with a small aerial and a remote control (both pretty useless). Of there's this which is a couple of quid cheaper and doesn't come with the remote you're never going to use.
That's a pretty clever little tool!