Plane Spotters / Flight Radar Thread

Associate
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A pair of F35's out over the north sea atm.
f35.png
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Soldato
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What do you think is going on here? Maybe towing a banner? Or something else?



Edit: do you remember when people used to knock on your front door in the 90s and try and sell you an Ariel photo of your house?
 
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Soldato
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Support for the dump1090, flightaware and flaghtrader24 dockers I've been using has gone so need a replacement.

Who's running dump1090 on what? I don't mind sticking it on a Windows or Linux VM.
 
Soldato
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I set up a new feeder yesterday on a pi4 2gb running buster.

Did look for docker images but went without because they all seem quite out of date.
 
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@Feek

I'm in North Wales

Pi4 B 2GB
Pi POE hat
Longish USB Extension (3-5m?)
rtlsdr v3
sma pig tail
rtlsdr LNA
Sma n type pig tail
FA 1090 Antenna on a 5ft pole in my loft

Raspbian Buster
Dump1090-fa
Graphs 1090

Ground is approx 235m above sea level. Loft approx 7m above ground.

At time of posting tracking 65-75 aircraft at 600-800 messages per second.

Still optimising the gain.

Not great screenshot from phone screen. Will follow up with a desktop one.

Range wise I'm.seeing parts of the North Sea, English Channel and a little bit of Calais and Dunkirk.

To the west I'm a little more hampered as I have Snowdon, Cader Idris and Tryfan 39 miles West South West of my location so I'm only seeing the east coast of Ireland >= 20,000ft.

Screenshot-20200831-093606.png
 
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Commissario
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Thats a good solid setup, I like that you've got minimal coax on the RF side, it's working well. Have you seen Wiedehopf's autogain script? I use it on my receiver in the loft and have set it for between 4.0 and 6.5 (% of strong signals) and am very happy with what it does. It really is just a case of set it and forget it.
 
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Yes actually I installed it at about 8am this morning.

I have it running every 15 mins for the next few hours until it gets within range then I'll drop it back to daily.

I've set between 3-5 from research. What made you choose 4-6.5? Trial and error?

I was initially seeing 28% Strong Signals.

Now coming down to single digits

P.s. Yes I tried to keep coax to a minimum and use USB extension cable instead.

It also gets the SDR away from the raspberry pis. Got a few in the loft and read that they can be quite noisy.

I've not got ferrite cores on the USB I've seen a few people advising one at both ends?
 
Associate
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Looking for tips on my setup.

I currently have a flightaware pro stick and N--Type antenna running in the spare bedroom and the antenna propped up in the window.

What would I need to move the setup into my loft where they is no power.

Any pointers would be good also.
 
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@SuperOwl86

Are you running on a pi or another platform?

Ideally you want the computer and SDR in the loft too so that you can run a short length of coax to the antenna. If you just want the antenna alone in the loft you'll need a long run of coax which causes losses.

If it's a pi you need a 5v USB power so your options are:
  • Run a mains socket / Extension Lead up to the loft
  • Run a long USB cable to the loft
For either of those you could also run an ethernet cable for networking or just WiFi if your pi can get a signal.

Or get a POE Switch or POE injector which allows you to run a single ethernet cable up to the loft which will handle both the power and network connection. You will need a POE hat for the Pi as well.

If you have a pi 3b then you'll be able to get a few hours use from a USB battery bank. Pi4 consumes more power so not sure how long it would last.

A battery isn't a serious option for long term use but if you could keep it running for a couple of days it would allow you to asses what gains you can get from moving to the loft and whether it's worth the effort of running cables. (It almost certainly will be!)
 
Commissario
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Thanks @Nazbit I am running a pi. Not sure I can find a usb cable long enough.
Don't use a long USB cable, do it via PoE. I've got a 30m cat5 cable running from my shack to the top of my mast where the Pi 4 sits in a box with the official PoE hat.

What are you using to create these heat maps please?
They're generated via polar.sh from here.
 
Commissario
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I've set between 3-5 from research. What made you choose 4-6.5? Trial and error?
I realised I didn't answer this - Yes, I found that range works best for me. I've got good coverage from my main receiver outside and this is my one in the loft so it's not too critical but it seems to work well enough.

I wonder how yours is doing now, I'm assuming it's settled down a bit.
 
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