A couple months ago I bought the 978/1090 MHz antenna from adsbexchange and a 5m KMR400-C cable and finally got around to installing it this weekend. While I was expecting improved range with this setup, instead my signal strength tanked, range went to a few miles, messages received went to about 1% of what I had with the 5dBi sma antenna from my NooElec kit. Did a little testing and found that my cable is fine but the antenna center conductor is somehow shorted to the shield. Since I bought this so long ago I doubt I can return it, anyone have suggestions to repair? It looks like the element may be threaded into the housing but I don't want to wrench on it without some guidance first.
Interesting. How do you know it's shorted? The antenna internally is brass and we've never had a issue with them in 1000's of antenna sold. Email us : https://www.adsbexchange.com/contact/
Ok, thanks to James at ADSBx I know my malfunction, keyword being 'my'. By using the awesome antenna from ADSBx with a pre-existing LNA I had too much gain in my system and the SDR was being saturated. Removed the LNA and now have almost as good of reception as I did with the cheapy antenna, since this antenna has a wider bandwidth than the cheap wire in molded plastic I'm picking up more signals near 1090 that are causing noise and other challenges for the decoder, I'll be filtering those out soon and should then see the improved range that I was expecting.
