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  • NEW JUST OUT FLIGHTAWARE DONGLE

    Does anyone know if the new just out Flightaware Pro Stick USB ADS-B receiver dongle and the 1090 MHZ band pass filter will work on a FlightRadar24 Raspberry setup? It is said to increase coverage hundreds of miles over the NooElec R820T2 SDR & DVB-T NESDR Mini 2+ dongle.

  • #2
    Hundreds of miles! ROFL!

    Physics is same for everyone, as is line of sight principle at such frequencies. Bandpass filter will only help your repeater frontend not being overloaded by surrounding high power transmitters (Cell Phone Towers, TV Transmitters, you name it ...) and improve decoding of low signals but in no way will it increase receive range of hundreds of miles.

    An antenna situated at 300m ASL will be able, best case, to catch a signal of 10000m cruising plane at approx 500km distance. After that the signal needs to be decodable etc ....

    IMHO Such assumptions are just pure scam to try to attract feeders to them....
    F-LFST2



    "Life without knowledge is death in disguise"

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    • #3
      The flightaware colinear 1090 antenna is nice. But any dump1090 compatible DVB-T stick will work as an ADS-B receiver and you can buy everything you need separately on Amazon for less money.
      I don't know if that filter helps as the DVB-T is tuned to 1090MHz and the filter is lossy. The flightaware co-linear antenna is pretty narrow band anyway. I don't use the filter with my FA antenna and get up to about 200 nmi in the attic.

      Edit: To your original question, yes it will work with FR24 on an RPi but it won't increase your range hundreds of miles unless you only have about a 50 mile range now.
      Last edited by Sam26K; 2016-04-07, 08:53.

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      • #4
        I'm using it with FR24. It's definitely improved my results.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by KK6LDW View Post
          I'm using it with FR24. It's definitely improved my results.
          Are you using it with the filter?

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          • #6
            Yeah. You're better off with the filter installed. There was a good article today about the Pro Stick that goes into some of this:
            Recently FlightAware released a new RTL-SDR dongle sold at zero profit at $16.95 USD. It's main feature is that it comes with an ADS-B optimized low noise amplifier (LNA) built directly into the dongle. FlightAware.com is a flight tracking service that aims to track aircraft via many volunteer ADS-B contributors around the world who use low cost receivers such as the RTL-SDR. In this post we will review their new dongle and hopefully at the same time provide some basic insights to LNA positioning theory to show in what situations this dongle will work well. A good LNA has a low noise figure

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            • #7
              Thanks KK6LDW for the great info.

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              • #8
                That new FA USB receiver stick optimized for 1090Mhz looks nice. But I'm still not convinced from that link that the filter really contributes anything.'
                The FA co-linear antenna is already tuned for 1090 and has a very narrow band. If FA's new DVB stick is further optimized for only 1090 then how much value is an inline filter?
                IMHO is that they have a large stock of 1090Mhz filters that they are trying to unload with an improved, optimized DVB stick.

                I do like that new FA DVB stick, but I challenge anyone to prove that the filter really helps with actual spectrum analyzer data.
                Last edited by Sam26K; 2016-04-09, 05:16.

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                • #9
                  One other thing on this new USB DVB-T stick from FlightAware is that it is high power (like most DVB-T sticks) and works best plugged directly into the pi and not at the end of long run of USB cable.

                  The best configuration is RPi with DVB-T plugged directly in to the RPi and the antenna as close as possible all mounted on the top of a pole

                  Edit: A six inch USB extension cable between a DVB-T stick and the RPi is never a problem, but anything more than that can be a problem. Avoid long runs of USB cables on the illusion that it provides power to the devices.
                  Last edited by Sam26K; 2016-04-09, 06:37. Reason: clarification

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Sam26K View Post
                    That new FA USB receiver stick optimized for 1090Mhz looks nice. But I'm still not convinced from that link that the filter really contributes anything.'
                    The FA co-linear antenna is already tuned for 1090 and has a very narrow band. If FA's new DVB stick is further optimized for only 1090 then how much value is an inline filter?
                    IMHO is that they have a large stock of 1090Mhz filters that they are trying to unload with an improved, optimized DVB stick.

                    I do like that new FA DVB stick, but I challenge anyone to prove that the filter really helps with actual spectrum analyzer data.
                    The dongle is in no way optimised for 1090mhz, it is just the standard reference layout with an additional amplifier stage at the RF end, no filtering or anything, I have just got one and am using it for FLARM reception on 868.3mhz (for which it is working very nicely), I also got one of the FA filters and put it on my PP box (Intel NUC running Win-7 with standard RTL-820t2 dongle and Chinese 9dbi antenna) and saw an immediate increase in planes received, I then added an amplifier and am now seeing around 50% more planes and around 20nm greater range (it is filling gaps on my VRS plot that has been running for the last 6 months), previously when I tried the amplifier I saw no increase as the dongle was being swamped by out of band signals, I would not expect the filter to show much improvement with a small indoor antenna, but with an external one it is worth a try.
                    The other thing I noticed was that Windows will not recognise it if you just swap it from a standard dongle as the USB identifier is different, you need to re-run the zadig setup, but it was seen fine on my RPi2 running the OGN software.
                    Last edited by F-EGLF1; 2016-04-09, 13:13. Reason: Frequency correction
                    FR24 F-EGLF1, Blitzortung station 878, OGN Aldersht2, PilotAware PWAldersht, PlanePlotter M7.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by F-EGLF1 View Post
                      The dongle is in no way optimised for 1090mhz, it is just the standard reference layout with an additional amplifier stage at the RF end, no filtering or anything,
                      Ok, but usually high gain amplifiers are designed with a narrow band for power efficiency. I would just like to see the spectrum analyzer data of with and without the filter at the input to the receivers antenna connector.

                      Edit: For clarification, I am referring to the FlightAware 1090 colinear antenna which is tuned for 1090 Mhz. Would like to see the actual spectrum analyzer data of with and without the FlightAware inline 1090 Mhz filter with the 1090 FlightAware Antenna.
                      Last edited by Sam26K; 2016-04-11, 03:20. Reason: clarification

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                      • #12
                        Are there any extra steps needed to use this? I'm new to this and have been using a NooElec. Just got the FlightAware stick and can't seem to get it to connect. I'm on windows right now, probably going to start using my Pi soon.
                        Last edited by onehitch; 2016-05-21, 00:25.

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                        • #13
                          A filter is necessary in almost all cases because the Pro Stick's front end rf amplifier is a wide band amplifier, and amplifies all tv, cell/mobile phone and other signals, causing overload of dongle's tuner chip.

                          Without filter, the gain of dongle has to be lowered from "max" (49.6 dB) to 30 to 35 dB to prevent overloading and saturation of dongle's front end by Cell/Mobile phone, TV, and other strong signals. This means most of gain of the pre amplifier of dongle is lost.

                          With filter, the unwanted signals are rejected before reaching dongle, and gain can be set to maximum (or nearly maximum), and message rate, number of planes and maximum range increase.




                          Last edited by abcd567; 2016-05-21, 01:23.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by onehitch View Post
                            Are there any extra steps needed to use this? I'm new to this and have been using a NooElec. Just got the FlightAware stick and can't seem to get it to connect. I'm on windows right now, probably going to start using my Pi soon.
                            Sometimes the dongle will not fully insert into usb slot of computer due to orange plastic protruding over usb metal like a 2mm wide plastic collar. This happenned with me. I cut off with a knife, this extra plastic over the usb metal so it can be inserted into computer socket about 2 mm more, and this solved my problem

                            Go to Flightaware forums and search for Pro Stick, and you will find many threads and lot of useful discussions & tips.
                            Last edited by abcd567; 2016-05-21, 01:10.

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                            • #15
                              Figured it out, user error installing the drivers through zadig. I have the filter on it. Even with my terrible antenna placement (and terrible antenna in general) it about tripled my range, still not great though. I went from hitting 10nm to 30nm, although its been a quiet night so it could get better. Still have a lot to work on. I mainly started doing this because I live right below a low section of an RNP approach that doesn't often show up on FR24. So the range isn't too huge an issue.

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