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?

[Runway 31]

It is possible you are suffering interference from TV masts, does.the reception get better if you ove the antennas inside the balcony.  Also as abcd advises move it around on the balcony to see where reception is best

I wouldnt like to thing the cable and its length will be the cause as i would like to think that has all been tested before production.  From what I see from reviews its a descent antenna

Alan

[abcd567]

Alan is right. Another possible cause is strong RF interference  from nearby mobile/cell phone towers or TV towers

You can easily conduct a scan for presence of interference by method given in following How-to:

Do I Need A Filter?


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[Dennis Ro]

Hi, thank you for your answer.
The Antenna is in the very same position as the nooelec was. This, because I only have one position on balcony where reception was good and it doesn’t interfere with anything else.

I am using the latest softwares from RadarBox and Flightradar installed after that. I really don’t know how the program is called.

What I have done:
1. installing new Raspberry Pi OS Lite (bookworm)
2. setup RBFeeder as described here: https://www.radarbox.com/raspberry-pi/guide
3. setup fr24 as described here: https://www.flightradar24.com/share-your-data


As much as I liked those step by step guides, I am now totally lost in answering your question regarding installed software and increasing gain setting (And I don’t know if it is a good way to do it, how I’ve did it - although FR24 and RB is feeded with data - so it certainly works)

Edit: the filter thing I have overseen. Will have a look now

[Dennis Ro]

Alan is right. Another possible cause is strong RF interference  from nearby mobile/cell phone towers or TV towers

You can easily conduct a scan for presence of interference by method given in following How-to:

Do I Need A Filter?


.

I don’t understand how to install PIL on bookworm.
But, could it be an interference problem since it wasn’t with the little antenna?

Little info beside:
Made yesterday everything new
Installed pi lite
Then dump1090-fa
Piaware
FrFeeder
RBFeeder
ADB-sexchange

Thought that would be a good idea to have a dump1090 instance

[abcd567]

@Denis Ro

Command to install PIL on Bookworm:

sudo apt install python3-pil   


.

[Dennis Ro]

@abcd567

@Denis Ro

Command to install PIL on Bookworm:

sudo apt install python3-pil   


.

Thank you, your advices are awesome. Found them across the internet.
Is it correct, that it shows that a filter is highly needed?

[abcd567]

@Dennis Ro

Sure you need a filter. Please see cutout from your scan I have attached below.

A high gain antenna not only picks more ads-b signal, but also picks more out of band rf signals, which act as rf noise, and overload the dongle making it deaf to weaker signals from distant aircraft.

[UFO]

RadarBox antenna only works better with RadarBox flight stick bcz RB Flight stick has built in LNA & 1090MHz filter.

i tried connecting my brand new RadarBox antenna with SDRPLAY SDR & RTL SDR and i got 1NM range & if i connect same antenna to RB Flight stick boom i get 233NM.

I contacted RB about this thing and nobody replied back !

[abcd567]

RadarBox antenna only works better with RadarBox flight stick bcz RB Flight stick has built in LNA & 1090MHz filter.

i tried connecting my brand new RadarBox antenna with SDRPLAY SDR & RTL SDR and i got 1NM range & if i connect same antenna to RB Flight stick boom i get 233NM.

Absence of LNA & Filter can NOT drop range fro 233 nm to 1 nm. It may result in dropping range from 233 nm to say 100 nm or 50 nm at the most.

It is most likely a connection issue. Check and tighten the antenna cable connector on SDRPlay and RTL-SDR.

Another possibility is that you have not installed proper software for SDRPlay & RTL-SDR

[Runway 31]

The Airnav antenna sold individually is the same antenna supplied with the xrange receivers so there should be no issues with the cable type

The usual cause of low range is bad sighting of the antenna.  The are designed to be sighted outside with a clear view of the sky.  Anything other than this will result in sub-optimal performance

Also as stated by abcd connection issues cause reduced range and all connections should be the first thing to be checked.  Connecting as you have done to another receiver type and getting the desired range would indicate an issue with the other receiver type

Alan

[Dennis Ro]

Gave the antenna back and bought a home made antenna for 22 euros and everything is working fine.
Could be, that the antenna was broken or it is crap. This homebrewed antenna give me 223 nm of sight at the same position.