Antenna issue after moving to the roof.

[SomeGen]

I just replaced the feeder cable with better cable and the antenna with another one I made. It also worked great on the ground... Now I lose things even further out, but don't have the long range I had before. Maxing out at 40nm at the moment, and losing things once they get about 5nm away. Of what I do have, dump is showing great signal strength, but hardly seems to be getting any messages and is using way to much cpu for 5 contacts.. :/

[Oblivian]

oh you have a dongle? heh. You may need to change the Automatic Gain settings now, if your antenna has a heap more signal you could be overloading the front end

[Rooster]

Heres how mine is set...

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[JackL]

Heres how mine is set...

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3728[/ATTACH]

I've never messed with the gain settings. Perhaps I should!
I am having pretty good performance near and far though with the stock antenna.

ss1.jpg

[JackL]

I just replaced the feeder cable with better cable and the antenna with another one I made. It also worked great on the ground... Now I lose things even further out, but don't have the long range I had before. Maxing out at 40nm at the moment, and losing things once they get about 5nm away. Of what I do have, dump is showing great signal strength, but hardly seems to be getting any messages and is using way to much cpu for 5 contacts.. :/

Do you have a million planes not sending position data? Sometimes I seem overwhelmed by those planes. I've had over 110 planes at one time with only 4 or 5 transmitting location. Tracking performance seems to suffer at those times.

[peterhr]

I just replaced the feeder cable with better cable and the antenna with another one I made. It also worked great on the ground... Now I lose things even further out, but don't have the long range I had before. Maxing out at 40nm at the moment, and losing things once they get about 5nm away. Of what I do have, dump is showing great signal strength, but hardly seems to be getting any messages and is using way to much cpu for 5 contacts.. :/

Where are you ?
Are you in an area that is preparing for mandatory ADSB use?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[SomeGen]

I'm in Western Australia, about 5nm from YPPH.
Fairly sure anything above FL290 here is already required to have ADSB.

[YSWG]

Less then two years, WA will see more aircraft fitted with ADS-B.

http://www.airservicesaustralia.com/projects/ads-b/other-mandates-2014-2017/

2016 – IFR for Western Australia: On and after 4 February 2016, an aircraft that is operated under the IFR in Airspace that is Class A, B, C or E and within the arc of a circle that starts 500 NM true north from Perth aerodrome and finishes 500 NM true east from Perth Airport must carry serviceable ADS-B transmitting equipment that complies with Civil Aviation Order 20.18 and Civil Aviation Order (CAO) 20.18 Amendment Instrument 2012 (No. 1).

[1090 MHz]

I've noticed when the planes take-off and bank right or left the station tracking the flight will lose signal for a few seconds. I believe it's to do with signal phasing since the ground station antenna is always vertically polarized and when a plane is banking its antenna is no longer 100% vertical ... this will cause a drop in signal.

Building a circular polarized ADS-B antenna would be a good experiment to see if it helps... if that's the case then phasing might be the cause of other issues too.