New setup not working

[Tiennetti]

Good morning everyone,
I had for >4 years a setup with raspberrypi+usb dongle+default antenna and (given the conditions) was working quite well, tracking aircraft easily around 150NM

Now i had a proper 1090 antenna (vinnant made, i bought it 4 years ago) installed on the roof, connected with around 30m of cable (RG58 or R8, couldn't recall from memory) to the same dongle
With this new setup i tracked 1 aircraft in 24h

I made the rtl_test and the dongle appear to be working

How can i troubleshoot this to be sure where the system is failing?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Anmer]

Can I check that the only thing that changed was the external antenna?

Have you checked reception using the old antenna? And are the connections the same on both antenna?

[Tiennetti]

Thanks for your answer Anmer
Correct, the antenna was changed and the raspi moved to another location, but using the same power supply
As the raspi in now in a rack inside a garage i would have no contacts anyway, i can only try to pub the raspi back where it was with the old antenna

The new antenna connects through the RG58 cable and a SMA connector+MCX adaptor
I checked with a multimeter and there is continuity between the coaxial core of the cable and the core of the mcx connector, as well as the earth

[Anmer]

RG58 is not great cable but if it's what you were using before it should work as well with the new antenna.

Check the SMA adapter isn't RP-SMA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMA_connector

[Tiennetti]

Before i was using the small TV antenna that came with the dongle, so i know the problem lies with the antenna someway
i just would like to understand if it is a matter of connections or if the cable is too long, or anything else

[Tiennetti]

I just checked and the cable is an RG8 Mini (50ohm)

I connected all back to the default antenna and the setup started tracking again

[Tiennetti]

Hi everyone,
checking here on the forum, i can see that the antennas are normally mounted on wooden/plastic masts, while mine is bolted directly to an earthed pole
Could this be the problem?

Thanks in advance