Hello Tim, As far as the radar box green one goes I would check the spec first but at the same time I wouldn't put it past them to start making them for their own equipment only, Wiedehopf has answered it well I think. C
Oh and the U2 spy plane has been flying a lot of patterns along the coast of California stays up most all day 60,000ft sometimes there are 2 of them flying flyin out there....Damn californians....that's why I moved to Arizona..lol
978 isn't that interesting usually. Only a few GA planes on 978. What are you using, the adsbx image or are you doing your own install (in that case see this guide: https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/Raspbian-Lite:-ADS-B-receiver)
Hi, Don't know about in the States but 1090 is the most commonly used frequency here in the UK but I have tried 978 and only got a few hits a day, whereas 1090 is on the go 24/7 and a to rack up over a million messages doesn't take long at all, it does have its slow periods but you can still see hits all day and night. I think I am tight in in saying that 978 is busier although you may need to be closer to an airport or transmitting station. I would start on 1090 and you can always experiment on 978 when you get another dongle (they are a bit like Raspberry pi's they breed when your not around). Happy hunting. C
I'm afraid I would beg to differ there wiedehopf, I was getting a lot more detailed signals, I believe they use it in the European countries, France, Holland, Belgium of which a lot of ground is covered by my setup. The only difference other than that was I did only get at best about 4 or 5 hits in a day and sometimes nothing at all, would maybe wait a week sometimes. It was far too detailed for noise and by genuine a/c, I've not been on that frequency now for about eighteen months or so. At this moment I have a/c on the 200nm ring on the adsbx map, my maximum is around 250 nm's which hasn't been for a while now. C.
978 decoder will decode noise .. remember it's trying to make sense of things and sometimes noise has a pattern./ The UK was going to trial weather etc on 978 years ago, I don't think it materialized. 1090 is all you need. With that 978 SDR, you could tune to acars tho .... a sister project by one of the ADSBx feeders / mods airframes.io There can be some interesting stuff on acars
Hello James, Firstly my apologies to wiedehoph I didn't mean to appear to dismiss his remark out of hand, I value his comments. I had a message typed out but somehow it seems to have disappeared, maybe it was telling me it was too long. I hear what you are saying about 978 but some of the messages were too crisp and continuous to be noise and also few and far between, maybe 3 or 4 a day and then nothing all week. I am at present building up a Raspberry pi to experiment with longer range ACARS, years ago that was all I used to do, I still have some old programs on floppy drives that I am dusting off and looking at again, as well as other programs and my old SBS-1 (still works after being the garage for a few years). Thanks for your comments James, always appreciated. If I'm not on again, I'd would like to wish everyone seasons and have a good one, or at least as far as circumstances will allow. Merry Christmas. C
After reading this thread last month I decided to see what the difference is between the orange, blue, and green devices. I already had the inline filter from when I first attempted ads-b with a generic SDR. Waited until I found good prices on the FA orange stick and the Radarbox green stick, the FA blue stick is what I have been using for several years. Switching to the FA orange with FA filter I saw a noticeable drop in signal, several dB, so my range dropped off and I was seeing fewer planes. I guess my area doesn't have much interference because taking the filter off I saw a slight improvement in the number of aircraft and signal levels, but still noticeably less than the FA blue stick. So it seems the amplifier+filter on the blue stick is better than the amplifier on the orange one. With the Radarbox green stick it was about the same as the FA blue one. I didn't feel like running it for a week to and taking notes so I can't say for certain but the FA blue might have a slight edge, but less than 1 dB difference. It's such a small difference I'd bet that if you got a bunch of each one you could find ones from each that did better or worse due to manufacturing tolerances. To sum up, I'd say you can't go wrong with either the FA blue or Radarbox green.
Hello MartyS, Thanks for taking time out for your testing, very informative and given me food for thought, I don't think I will be up and down in the loft for 1db though, as you pointed out I guess it could be the other way round in another test. But, I have a couple of nooelec dongles and a Hamitup (or whatever it is they call it stuck on the underside of my desk somewhere, haven't seen it for ages) and a spare FA filter, I don't know if they are compatible but I could give the range test a go from my desk on another setup, it won't be connected to the roof antenna (don't like to disturb it, been running smooth as silk since wiedehopf's and Richards intervention) but I could rig up a decent one with the odds and sods I have around. Thought I'd put the nooelec hamitup on maybe dragging in a bit of shortwave ACARS I shan't be testing the the blue or green dongle though, I wouldn't mind getting them if I was going to use them anyway so, we can go with your findings on those. I'll have a look see what I have around and post what what I am doing, may take a while though (got the hall and kitchen floor to do) Thanks again Marty, good to hear from you, be safe. Now where did I put that FA filter?
I've also have a Nooelec NESDR Smart and a hamitup, haven't used them in a few years, I didn't bother trying it since I don't think it would do any better than the FA orange stick. I remember the SDR working well for strong local channels, but the hamitup had loads of noise and harmonics of strong channels that made it hard to hear short wave stuff. I do remember decoding some pager messages and being shocked to find they were transmitting some personal medical info for people in a nearby nursing home (names, room numbers, various medical conditions). I also remember the patchwork of software needed was kind of a pain to use, and since then I had my computer die so had to rebuild it and reinstall windows and all programs so don't have any of that installed anymore on my PC. Also since then I got a scanner that I use for air band radio and fixed my 30 year old radio shack shortwave radio, both work way better than the SDR.
Hiya, Yeah, I used to have a AOR 7030 SW radio but made the biggest mistake of my life and sold it because I hadn't used it for a while, wished I still had it, fabulous piece of kit, I'm a bit of an AOR fan, I have two working 8000's and one I bought for spares and a 3000A, wouldn't part with them, although I was offered a Realistic pro 2042 a couple of years ago for £20 so I took the guy up on it, turns out the only thing wrong with it was it was filthy dirty, now looks a treat and works a treat, sits on my shelf plodding away at Lakenheath and that is all I ask of it, (POI tanker called out with an emergency 7700 squawk yesterday, some flight handling problems, I always listen to see that they get down OK). I've heard that said about the Hamitup but I think it's a bit more than just a another dongle, I was given to understand it opened up the frequency range so the SDR could be used more as a shortwave radio, mind you I've got a Tecsun PL-660 (xmas gift a few years ago) and at the moment I get more usb/ssb out of that, I can hear Shannon with just a piece of wire hanging from a picture in one corner, I'll have to have a read up again and get all this offset frequency and stuff straight in my head first. I find the nooelec dongles are not too bad, (do get a bit warm) the range on my tester setup doesn't seem to be that far adrift, although I've not done a comprehensive comparison yet with the others, I'm going to set it up and compare it with the signal from my uploader in the loft, in a certain direction out of the window I get quite a good range with just an antenna on the window sill, won't be as good as the roof mount but if I do them the same then any difference that shows up will be down to the dongle setup, not because it has an advantage. I used to decode all sorts years ago, even weather faxes to the RN ships from Bracknell but a/c seems to be the only one that stuck with me, I do have a few programs from those days (on floppy disc), complete set of Ham Radio Collection, HamComm v3.1, selcall, skysweeper, all sorts, I think they came out on windows 5 but I have had them running in compatible mode on Windows 7 under 98, I tend to stay away from the private stuff though, I sometimes think oh, that looks interesting (the program not what they are saying) and I would setup and get working but then lose interest and move on, definitely don't do Police. This computer I am using I've had to re-install windows twice already and it's only just over a year old, it seems some day's I switch it on and it boots or it boots and freezes, then it freezes and just plain refuses to budge but it only takes about 20 mins. with the on board recovery on it, damn good apart from that. Talking of freezing, is anyone else having the odd moment on the ADSBx own flight map? when that yellow box warning comes up. Also, on the Hamitup I have just the one antenna connection, the one marked noise out (which I am assuming as a raw signal connection) is blanked off, does anyone know if it is only a question of putting another connector in and drilling the case for the antenna, because I found a connector and there doesn't seem to be that much difference in price between the two units. Take care. C.
The hamitup I have was prebuilt and doesn't have the noise out connection either, it's an open source circuit design so there are many variants, one is to be able to use it as a noise signal generator for testing antennas. It is not a dongle, its a frequency converter, it boosts all signals coming in so the SDR can see them. The normal way it's used is there is an RF in and an RF out, you connect an SDR to the output and an antenna to the input, then all signals are boosted by something like 100 MHz. Since the chips in most SDR dongles are repurposed TV tuners they don't tune down into the shortwave and AM bands, so once you have the hamitup working you would tune the SDR to something like 1010000 MHz to hear a signal at 10KHz.
Yeah same here, I new it wasn't just another dongle, as I understand it it acts as frequency supplier to the lower range that a dongle can't do itself, or words to that effect, I'll let you know how I get on Marty. It's good that we post these for others to read, who are just starting, it's how I started out, still am reading and learning. C.
