Does it make sense to feed?

[helios]

Hi

I live in the swiss alps with a high elevated horizont (10°-35°).
Does it make sense to support flightradar by buying a receiver? There are quite often helicopters around in this valley, but i don't know whether they have ADS-B.
The coverage for civil aviation is already pretty good (for FL >230)

[Mike]

I would recommend to apply for a free receiver here http://forum.flightradar24.com/threa...rease-coverage!
so our team can evaluate your location.

[helios]

Just FYI
I finally managed to set up a RTL-Dongle (T-LSZA3) and it's kind of disappointing, even though I haven't expected good results as I'm surrounded by mountains.
I made some calculations to estimate the maximum distance for line-of-sight reception for my location (see attachment) and in practice it matches pretty good.
fr24.png
The best distance so far was about 100km (54NM) but for most directions more than 30km isn't possible.
There were two helicopters in the valley yesterday but they don't seem to use ADS-B.
However I'll keep it running ...

[nzradar]

Helios, what software did you use to make the chart?

[helios]

There's a website that provides horizon/elevation data, but for Switzerland only.
The trigonometry and graph was done with libreoffice.
ads-b-coverage.png

[Ratty]

In my area (Strasbourg Region, France) rescue helicopters have ADS-B but do not broadcast their position. having M-LAT through the FR24 receiver would allow to make them visible

[helios]

Yes i can confirm. Meanwhile i discovered that a lot of them have ADS-B (Swiss air rescue for example, i almost see them daily), but they only broadcast the altitude or no position at all.
But in a narrow valley like this I live in, no one other will receive the broadcasts, so it's even pointless to have a MLAT-receiver, as it needs four of them to locate a position of a transmitter.

Of course there are other aircrafts in higher altitudes that could be located with MLAT, but with the poor coverage it doesn't make sense to spend that much money.