Problems with new AirNav RadarBox 1090 Antenna

[Dennis Ro]

Hello, Flighttrackers :)
Since last week I have a running Raspberry Pi with Radarbox Feeder.
The RPi is outside on my Balcony, safe from rain and anything in a box. The first week I only had a indoor antenna. I know, that my balcony is not the best position to put an antenna on, but it's the only spot, where I can place it, because it is not my house.

So I wanted to improve my reception and bought the outdoor antenna Airnav Radarbox 1090.

The problem now is: With my little indoor Antenna I got abpout 100nm + reception and with the new way bigger antenna it's only about 40 nm and it sees much less aircrafts in the air.

I've made the setup twice, put every cable off and on again to check if I've made a mistake but it's not better.

I hope, someone could help me here. I really had hoped to get a better reception :(

The Dongle I'm using is Nooelec RTL-SDR v5 SDR.
The little indoor Antenna was Nooelec RaTLSnake M6 v2

New Antenna is this: https://shop.radarbox.com/collections/adsb-receivers/products/airnav-ads-b-1090-mhz-outdoor-antenna-with-sma-connector

Any help is really appreciated.

[abcd567]

One reason may be difference in loction of AirNav and NooElec antennas. Try changing location of AirNav antenna, as close to NooElec location as possible. Also try various other location in the Balcony.

The other reason may be difference in length and quality of coax cables of the two antennas.

Nooelec antenna "RaTLSnake M6 v2" has 2 meters coax cable type RG58, which has attenuation (signal loss) = 0.7 dB per meter

The AirNav 1090 Antenna has 30 feet (10 meters) cable (unknown specifications, unknown attenuation).

Due to longer coax cable length (10m) compared to short length (2m) and unknown specs of coax, the signal strength arriving at dongle from AirNav antenna possibly has less strength than signal arriving from NooElec antenna, resulting in reduction of range.

Try increasing gain setting of the dongle. Which decoder software you are using, dump1090-rb, or dump1090-fa, or readsb?