Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread

Lisapete · 29 Jan 2017 at 20:43

Feek said:
That's a really good point, I'd not even considered moving the Moonraker indoors to do a direct comparison side by side. It wouldn't be difficult at all to do that, perhaps I might try it this week, seeing as the weather looks as though it's going to be a bit warmer.

The software on the Pi is described briefly in my previous blog entry - I'm using an image from the ADS-B receiver project and with that, I'm feeding to Fr24, FlightAware, Planefinder and ADS-B Exchange. The heatmaps are generated by Planefinder although VRS can create one as well. If you go to my VRS server using the link in the blog, you can click Menu/Receiver Range and then select either the internal or external aerials to see the heatmap.

I'll have to give it a try also this end (South West) and try with the booster and without.

I'm tempted to order the dongle. Shame thy are £25. https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-p...htaware-pro-stick-plus-usb-sdr-ads-b-receiver

Feek · 29 Jan 2017 at 21:12

Significantly cheaper than buying the RTL-SDR dongle I previously recommended along with an external preamp/filter though.

Lisapete · 30 Jan 2017 at 08:03

Feek said:
Significantly cheaper than buying the RTL-SDR dongle I previously recommended along with an external preamp/filter though.

Already have a preamp/filter https://store.uputronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=50

Be interesting to see what happens with the 2 together. Might order it and the filter.

Have you had to adjust your gain settings?

Feek · 31 Jan 2017 at 09:12

Yes, just for a chuckle I did run them in series. I had to reduce the gain by about 20dB so that the front end wasn't swamped and once I'd done that, there was absolutely no noticeable increase in performance. That's to be expected as I'd effectively removed all the additional gain that the preamp gave.

neodude · 31 Jan 2017 at 09:23

Here's how mines looks, using a Flightaware Prostick (Orange) with the separate filter and a homemade 'cantenna' mounted in the loft...

Wondering if I would see much of an improvement with the Flightaware antenna mounted in the loft.

Feek · 31 Jan 2017 at 09:30

Probably not as much as you'd expect. You might get a bit more performance with a better aerial, you could try making a j-pole collinear like I've got above, perhaps three or four elements as opposed to just two.
I think you'd benefit more by replacing the receiver with a Pro Stick Plus or adding a preamp.

neodude · 31 Jan 2017 at 10:05

I was under the impression that the Prostick Plus was just a Prostick with a built in filter?

Feek · 31 Jan 2017 at 10:29

Oh that's possible, I haven't looked into the original one enough - If it has a preamp built into it then an aerial improvement will make a slight difference but it won't be much.

neodude · 31 Jan 2017 at 11:08

I'm happy with what I've got at the moment tbh, I'm 7th in the stats amongst local receivers. I only really signed up to get free premium accounts on FR24 and FlightAware

topgun06 · 23 Feb 2017 at 12:36

Doris is causing mayhem at Manchester and Birmingham. So many aircraft in holding patterns, failed landings, diversions etc.

Feek · 23 Feb 2017 at 12:44

I'm seeing the same in the airspace down here, some aircraft are going round the hold half a dozen times. I'm not close enough to see any missed approaches though but I'd wager there have been some.

VaderDSL · 23 Feb 2017 at 13:18

Yeah loads of go arounds at Manchester today. Including this Virgin 747 having a nice tour of England.

topgun06 · 23 Feb 2017 at 13:31

I noticed that Virgin heading up to Manchester and then when it got into that holding pattern after the failed landing. I assumed it had finally managed to land when I couldn't see it any longer. Obviously not!

VaderDSL · 23 Feb 2017 at 16:09

Some impressive videos floating around, e.g.

I was watching the flight radar for a few hours this morning, loads aborted and were diverted to Liverpool/Leeds. Not surprised after watching that vid.

topgun06 · 23 Feb 2017 at 16:31

Yes, loads of videos flying around! This could have been the A380 which I saw in a holding pattern with the previously mentioned Virgin flight after their failed landings.

bingham67 · 23 Feb 2017 at 17:08

I bet the turbulence on that was fun

miller745 · 23 Feb 2017 at 22:26

Whats the difference between dump1090-fa and dump1090-mutability?

Just got an RPi 3 setup using the install from PiAware, seems to be working fine apart from the aerial being bad/in a bad spot, just wondering what I can do to improve things. Will try the aerial higher up soon.

Doesn't seem to be a great deal of options for the map display either, I was hoping to have the a/c serial and height displayed under the icon, and for filters to only display military/mlat/helicopter traffic etc. Having virtual radar server run on the pi would be ideal I think.

neodude · 26 Feb 2017 at 19:23

dump1090-fa and dump1090-mutability are just 2 different forks of the same software. Having never used the latter I can't really comment on the differences.

What dongle/filter/antenna are you currently using? Have you calculated your maximum possible range based on your location and compared it to what you're getting?

There's plenty of customisation available for the map, have look around the flight aware forums.

Here's a live feed of my current setup.... http://neodude.home.kg/

Feek · 26 Feb 2017 at 23:11

I very much like all those overlays you've got on there. I tried to add them but couldn't make them work - Any tips/guides I can follow please? I'm using the ads-b receiver project scripts, chose mutability but replaced the map with the fa one (same as yours).

neodude · 27 Feb 2017 at 07:57

It was a guy on the FlightAware forums that made those overlays. Backup your dump1090 HTML folder, Download this and extract it to your dump1090 HTML folder, replacing the 2 files already there.