Hi,
Just joined this Radarbox monitoring of planes.
Two years ago I started my first Radio project and that is " Radio Meteor Observation " or as it is called RMO (
www.rmob.org) with a RTL-SDR dongle and a DIY 4 element Yagi antenna for the frequency of 174.31 MHz.
At the same time in order to understand the SDR radio stuff I made a little 1090 MHz antenna and then it started collecting dust until two days after getting my USB Flightstick I installed the Antenna again and now it is monitoring on a 24/7 PC the planes over my location.
Below the non professional set up of the two antennas. On the top of the PVC pipe the tiny 137mm dipole for 1090MHz. The dipole is 8.3 meters over ground level and ground level is 1950meter over sea level.
BTW I am also an amateur astronomer with an Observatory in the garden of the house.