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Feeding two or more receivers off one antenna

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  • Feeding two or more receivers off one antenna

    Quick question for the group, has anyone had good results by feeding multiple receivers by using a single antenna.

    Situation is, I feed to FR24, FlightAware, PlaneFinder and RadarBox24.

    Rule out using RadarBox24 with the new idea simply because it also feeds VHF audio so need to retain that antenna.

    So, feeding the other 3 with the better antenna, with the better amplifier then with "T" piece connectors at the antenna ports on each receiver.

    Question is, has anyone had good results by attempting this setup? Is there going to be any sort of degradation in reception among the receivers?

    Just that my shed is starting to look like a porcupine and running out of space above and attempting to clean up the area.

    Thank you to anyone that can offer advice,

    Nigel

    F-YARM1

  • #2
    You will get poor results using Tees for various reasons including interference from spurious signals emanating from the front end of one receiver passing through the tee to the others and vice-versa and poor antenna port impedance matching.

    The proper solution in your case, would be to use a multi port signal splitter/combiner such as this one by Mini Circuits:




    You will need to terminate the unused port with this item: http://r.ebay.com/hB1ymm


    An alternative might be this no-name one 3 port one, but caveat emptor http://r.ebay.com/gY3fYU You might ask the seller for the spec sheet to see if it is decent isolation between ports, comparable to the Mini Circuits, and decent attenuation around 6dB per port.

    You will need to offset the port attenuation by putting a suitable LNA in front of the splitter/combiner: http://r.ebay.com/GpVbmw

    These are just guidelines, and you may find equivalent devices all over eBay.

    If you are using simple RG6 type coax already, you could use a cable tv/satellite signal splitter at low cost, but keep in mind they are designed more for dividing the signal and keeping impedences matched, and not very good at isolating the ports from one another as it is not designed for weak signal use.

    If you are not interested in using MLAT from all the services, you could consider using one receiver and antenna, and ModeSDeco or VRS to split the data streams out to instances of FR24, FA and PF running on one computer. I do this with a Intel Compute Stick arrangement with good results.


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    • #3
      Thank you K5TED,

      Outstanding reply! Must say after 800 odd views of the question I was starting to wonder if I would ever get a reply at all but thank you !!

      I will certainly follow up on these items and give them a try. This is certainly the advice and suggestions I had been looking for.

      Regards,
      Nigel

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