Antenna for ADS-B (rtlsdr)

[Arby80]

ive just plugged the antenna that comes with it and ads-b is possible but the range is limited.



Anyone know of an antenna i can buy/make that would be ideal for ads-b?

[liamcarbin]

It depends on the route you want to go? Do you want to make your own? Or are you happy with buying one?

For me I got myself one of these
http://www.lamcommunications.net/produc ... cts_id=989

Sticks to the window and much much better than the supplied antenna that comes with the dongle.


Not exactly peak time at the moment, but I can have as many as 50 aircraft plotting at anyone time. And flights as far down as the south coast from my location (Stoke-on-Trent)

Flights going into BHX and EMA generally get to about 6,000ft before disappearing, although i've just had one flight getting down to 3,500ft before disappearing.

[Glamdring]

Or get one of these bad boys...

http://www.nevadaradio.co.uk/avionics/rama-r100

[Arby80]

I just made a quick antenna for it, pulling in allot more now.

[Arby80]

Another update, this time using adsbscope. range of this antenna is around 175km

[pete_uk]

Arby80, that's the way to do it!

[nerdsville]

Might be of interest to those on a budget. I found some construction plans to build a 1090MHz collinear out of coax http://www.balarad.net/ the longer you can make it and the more coax elements you can add the higher the gain.

I got 25m of cheap foam filled RG6 from screwfix for less than £8, some pvc piping for less than £2 then with some insulating tape and self-amalgamating tape which I already had and a suitable connector made a pretty good antenna for less than a tenner.

Only tools needed are a Stanley knife, cutters, hacksaw and a meter to check for continuity and shorts.

I have got it in the loft now (not ideal) and RTL1090 has full bars for data rate almost constantly during the day. The range is well over 200 miles in some directions which is a vast improvement to what I was getting and my location is not ideal stuck in the bottom of the Trent valley.

This video shows the improved reception I got compared to my wideband discone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-zispUwhN0

I made another (naff) video showing the ease of construction http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/2013/0 ... tenna.html and some posted other details on my blog http://nerdsville.blogspot.co.uk/2013/0 ... inear.html

If you are using different coax you will need to adjust lengths of coax elements according to the velocity factor, http://www.febo.com/reference/cable_data.html

[kr0ne]

I was going to suggest making a collinear as well but having tried to build one out of co-ax in the past, this method is really difficult to get right at high frequencies...

When I tried, it was for 2.4GHz WiFi use and I really struggled and eventually gave up.

I have not tried this yet, but I saw this alternative construction method a little while ago and have been meaning to give it a bash:

http://martybugs.net/wireless/collinear.cgi

It certainly looks a lot easier than the co-ax method...

[pete_uk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUYdCPFXXs

Worth a look

[nerdsville]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUYdCPFXXs

Worth a look

Thanks.. nice to know I didn't make it in vain

[kr0ne]

^ LOL!

Buy some end caps FFS!

[nerdsville]

^ LOL!

Buy some end caps FFS!

Why it only went up in my loft and my roof isn't that bad.. and they hadn't got any in B&Q

[pete_uk]

Got my collinear in the loft and its working well. I have aircraft over Milton Keynes and mid wales now

[Arby80]

Nice, I think m going to make that my next project, just need to get some single core coax.