2 aerials on one RB ?

[llama1910]

Hi,

due to the structure of the building I am living in, I can either track traffic to the north (aerial in the northern window) or the traffic to the south (aerial in the southern window).

Would it be possible to use two aerials at the same time to feed my RadarBox ? I have two COA-1090 aerials. What would I need to get such a setup running properly without loss of detection range ?

Many thank's in advance
Cheers
Carsten

[WiMo]

Yes, you can do that. Try to get hold of a so called "splitter" for the frequency range. Most ham radio two-way splitters for 23cm band will do. A splitter is a sort of T-junction, but one which matches impedance. With such a device you can hook two antennas to one receiver.
A splitter will introduce a slight insertion loss (about 0.5dB max. on a good splitter with N jacks), but that's unavoidable.

Rgds,
Ekki/WiMo

[Fenris]

Also note that in directions where both antennas can see an aircraft there will be unpredictable effects as the signal arrives from both cables and the waveform adds and subtracts, sometimes cancelling parts out and preventing it being decoded.

[bratters]

Having tried to answer the same problem in the same way, I found it wasn't worth the effort. There was not the net growth in traffic I  expected.

Still, it's fun trying these things. Let us know what happens.

[llama1910]

Thank's for all your answers.

Having tried to answer the same problem in the same way, I found it wasn't worth the effort. There was not the net growth in traffic I  expected.

Still, it's fun trying these things. Let us know what happens.

I will try a few things the next week. I still hope the traffic will increase, as for now I can really only track aircraft to either side of the building. Most of the time I track to the south which covers the whole French and Swiss border (I live near Frankfurt) - but to the north I only receive maybe 20NM. If I could increase that to some 60NM I'd be really happy ;O)