Aussie Feeders

[bappleby]

Cheers YSWG2,

I am currently on Inglewood Road and could fire a shot over the airport, however I will be relocating soon to the south of the lake and from there should pretty much have line of sight to the airport. I have installed the coaxial cable in my new home ready for a permanent feeder and that should happen within about three months. I suppose the cockatoos will chew try and it out as well which means I might have to relocate the dogs onto the roof to keep them away from my antenna

[bhaal]

Personally, with the DBT stick, I wouldn't bother too much getting a expensive antenna. You'd only see a slight improvement, if you've done the homebrew correctly. If you were getting an ADS-B receiver, then getting a expensive antenna is a must have if you want to get the most from the box.

Raising it will help, example is the FR24 (before going offline) box could pick-up aircraft taxiing from the disused control tower and on the runway (buildings block the rest of the taxiway from the disused control tower to the terminal) and I'm in fact a few metres below the airport and about 11km as the crow flies, having the antenna 2m (~10m off the ground, 2 storey building) above the roof gives it a better view above but the homebrew (using the DBT) on the other hand can only get them to ~300m before dropping off before the Sturt Hwy or Elizabeth Ave.

Well IMHO I think my antenna is working reasonably well, I am not using an amp of any sort, it's straight out of the antenna, into the dongle, about 1.5mtr of RG6 ... As it is, I cannot quite see the planes on the tarmac at YBBN, but their ADS-B altitude goes to about -200ft before I lose contact with them.. The same goes for the Redcliffe aerodrome (YRED) .. so I am thinking if I can get the antenna up just that little bit more, it will make a huge difference.. Let you all know how things go when I get to doing that..

Can't say I would be happy about cockatoos eating my antenna though.... We get them around here, but not in plague proportions.. I get them in the yard because I have a monster passionfruit vine, and they love them...

[Ressy]

Thanks T-YBBN50,

Unfortunately I have been waiting more than a minute, its been over 2 days and still nothing. I am regularly seeing up to 15 AC here and I would have thought it would at least be feeding some data. I suspect that something is wrong with my configuration or account but I am using the original FR24 key and I am in the same location as when I originally received my key.

please refer to the myriad of threads on here since forever, IOW, this is situation normal, FR24 give almost just as wide range of excuses for it, but above all, the best one yet, there is absolutely nothing wrong with there code or servers, nothing, ok, so dont try tell them that or you'll be put in the troll bin and ignored yes, they clearly lost sight of how they are in existence today - because of people like us who donate our time and resources for them, now if you bite the hand that feeds you enough, that hand stops feeding you, and if enough hands stop feeding you, you eventually fade away to nothing.

beyond that, there are of course several other feed services around who are more than happy to take our feeds, AND listen AND act if a problem is detected since it is of course to their benefit to track down and eliminate errors - not ignore/palm it off like happens around here.

[bappleby]

please refer to the myriad of threads on here since forever

Yes, I see your point, it is quite a painful exercise setting up and you end up screwing around wasting a heap of time reading trying to interpret what everyone is talking about. Buried deep in one of the threads I finally read something from someone who stated that you can’t run RTL1090 and the FR24Feeder at the same time. Turns out that was my problem I suspect and further testing pointed towards that being correct.

There has to be easier ways to help get this up and running for people, I spend all week dealing with frustrating things and this should really be pleasurable. Anyway, all is good now.

[GitseBase]

There has to be easier ways to help get this up and running for people,

Maybe a do's and don't (tips and tricks) topic where all of this info can be bundled.

[airnrail]

Interesting observation this afternoon that might also interest some of you guys. T-YBBN33 has been showing up as the feeder for a couple of Qantaslink Q300s that I'm pretty sure don't have ADS-B: VH-SBB and VH-SBT. SBB was attribued to T-YBBN33 up to about Rainbow Beach then switched to MLAT3 before disappearing as one would expect around that area with non-ADS-B aircraft. SBT became visible around Chinchilla on MLAT3 then switched to Y-BBN33 west of Wyvenhoe Dam and held on all the way to finals at Brisbane. It disppeared at 1800ft over the bay and was not picked up by any of the usual suspects at YBBN like F-YBBN2 so it obviously does not have ADS-B either. Seems that MLAT is getting mixed with ADS-B somewhere along the line.

[bhaal]

Interesting observation this afternoon that might also interest some of you guys. T-YBBN33 has been showing up as the feeder for a couple of Qantaslink Q300s that I'm pretty sure don't have ADS-B: VH-SBB and VH-SBT. SBB was attribued to T-YBBN33 up to about Rainbow Beach then switched to MLAT3 before disappearing as one would expect around that area with non-ADS-B aircraft. SBT became visible around Chinchilla on MLAT3 then switched to Y-BBN33 west of Wyvenhoe Dam and held on all the way to finals at Brisbane. It disppeared at 1800ft over the bay and was not picked up by any of the usual suspects at YBBN like F-YBBN2 so it obviously does not have ADS-B either. Seems that MLAT is getting mixed with ADS-B somewhere along the line.

Ahhh T-YBBN33 will be running the FA or mutability version of dump1090 along with FA's MLAT client which by default is configured to send MLAT positions back to dump1090 and they are running dump1090 with --forward-mlat turned on so they can see it in VRS or such...

I wrote earlier this little setup guide, but if people don't check forums etc... Also, obj has mentioned in other threads that he has told FR what he has done with the mlat stuff at FA and how FR can ignore the packets, just like some of the other software does... Link to old article is here: http://forum.flightradar24.com/threa...ll=1#post68679

[YSWG]

My Pi is running FA-dump1090 (not the mutability version) which was installed after I did a Raspberry image to the card (since the image that was available at the time from FA wouldn't work on the Pi 2) but I'm not sending any M-LAT via ADS-B to FR24.

F-YSWG1 is back online, range is back to normal (thanks to the new antenna and cable), as is the ground traffic at YSWG.

[rodeo]

Seems this discussion is happening across a few threads ..... I'm thinking about buying a second RPi2 and DVBt dongle and trying out the various versions of dump1090 etc, leaving T-YSBK22 alone - whats the old saying, if it ain't broke .....

This would allow me to have a play around, plus document for my own benefit how I did it. I now that there is two versions of dump1090 on YSBK22 at the moment - one installed by FR and and one installed by FA - and I have never quite worked out which one is running - I think its the FR one.

One other concern I have is the increase in data per day being used sending the data to FA and FR - I wonder how much this will increase with MLAT traffic - FA appears to turn the MLAT client on and off and I can see correlating spikes in my data throughput from the RPi.

[bhaal]

Seems this discussion is happening across a few threads ..... I'm thinking about buying a second RPi2 and DVBt dongle and trying out the various versions of dump1090 etc, leaving T-YSBK22 alone - whats the old saying, if it ain't broke .....

This would allow me to have a play around, plus document for my own benefit how I did it. I now that there is two versions of dump1090 on YSBK22 at the moment - one installed by FR and and one installed by FA - and I have never quite worked out which one is running - I think its the FR one.

One other concern I have is the increase in data per day being used sending the data to FA and FR - I wonder how much this will increase with MLAT traffic - FA appears to turn the MLAT client on and off and I can see correlating spikes in my data throughput from the RPi.

The FR dump1090 is run from /usr/lib/fr24 .. the FA dump1090 is run from /usr/bin/dump1090 and mutability is run from /usr/bin/dump1090-mutability.

As for the increase in data, there will be some double ups as you are sending ADS-B to FA's normal servers, and then sending "requested" ADS-B packets along with the Mode-S packets, and then you are receiving MLAT positions back from FA (which I think is exactly how it should be done for FR as well, especially for T-Feeders, we get something back for what we give)..

As for the FA MLAT client being disabled remotely, this has generally been as a result of difficulties they are having at the MLAT server end.. Once the bugs are gone, it will be good... Another thing I have noticed about MLAT is that the FA MLAT data appears to be far more accurate than the FR version... Not sure what they are doing differently, but I've only had a couple of flights go weird, where as the same flights on FR (even with FR's F-feeder MLAT3) go all over the place in fits and bursts... Odd...

[YSWG]

Had to scare off another cockatoo, was on top of the antenna. So it will need to come down again (to be checked as well) and need to workout a way of keeping them off it (without altering the look). :/

[bhaal]

Had to scare off another cockatoo, was on top of the antenna. So it will need to come down again (to be checked as well) and need to workout a way of keeping them off it (without altering the look). :/

The only thing I can thing of is cable ties ... Give the antenna lots of spikes...

[rodeo]

Had to scare off another cockatoo, was on top of the antenna. So it will need to come down again (to be checked as well) and need to workout a way of keeping them off it (without altering the look). :/

Shotgun :-)

[YSWG]

Tried the cable tie idea but these ones are too smart! I've put a plastic film canister over the top and taped it (temporary solution).

[Limpost]

Tried the cable tie idea but these ones are too smart! I've put a plastic film canister over the top and taped it (temporary solution).

What if you enclose the whole antenna in a 4 inch PVC pipe? Will it degrade the reception?