Category: ADS-B

Hexbeam is fixed, DXCC 2021 and general updates

Yaesu FTM-300DE monitoring the QSO365 YSFReflector

I posted back in January to say that the 17m element on my Hexbeam had snapped in the storms and was causing problems. It took over three months before everything came together to allow me to get the mast down and repair it but I managed it last weekend, just in time for the CQ […]

Rebuilding and raising my ADS-B receiver

Hexbeam with ADS-B aerial

Earlier this year I replaced my Hexbeam (with another Hexbeam) and I wrote about it on this site. There was a gap of a couple of weeks when I was between aerials and to take advantage of that, I temporarily moved my ADS-B receiver to a temporary stub mast, effectively raising it 7ft from the […]

1090 MHz ADS-B PCB antenna from eBay

That's better - The repaired ADS-B PCB antenna

About a month ago I bought a 1090MHz PCB aerial on eBay and immediately forgot about it. It arrived a few days ago and I had a good look at it before I connected it to anything to try and work out what it actually was. I decided from the construction that it was a […]

An updated internal and external ADS-B comparison

ADS-B receiver mounted on a rifle cleaning rod

It’s been well over a year since I moved my external ADS-B receiver to the top of my Alimast and it’s been performing very well, regularly sitting in the top five of the UK receivers according to the FlightAware statistics page and in the top ten world wide on the PlaneFinder sharers list.  A good location […]

Installing a new external ADS-B receiver

External ADS-B receiver using a Raspberry Pi and Poe to power it

Not long after my last post on this subject, back in January, the preamp I had mounted in the box at the top of 30ft of pole strapped to the side of my house failed and I was forced to removed that particular ADS-B aircraft tracker.  I still had my loft unit running and working […]

ADS-B setups – Comparing internal and external aerials

Following on from my last update, I’ve spent a fair bit of time experimenting with two very different ADS-B aerial configurations.  I have two Raspberry Pi3s, both running identical software and exactly the same receivers, the FlightAware Pro Stick Plus which is a version of the RTL-SDR dongle with a built in preamplifier and bandpass filter. […]

Building an ADS-B receiver setup

I realised recently that I’ve barely touched this blog for most of 2016 and I suppose that’s because I’ve not done a massive amount of radio this year.  My low powered QRSS/WSPR transmitter continues to run mostly 24/7 on various bands (on 30m at time of writing) and my radio high point of the year […]