I was curious how I could hear an aircraft on a scanner say it is flying over you're house for example what should you tune to the tower,ARTCC,or approach/departure?
On what radio do you run ADS-B? Is that using an SDR with one of the mode B bursts?Run ADSB...
You can ID the aircraft,
Flight level, Speed
Heading & real time
position(gps) data.
That will help you
immensely.
Well then my scope would be quiet large. I live at 6300 feet above Southern California and I can hear aircraft for several hundred miles. With that said, what I can hear at 1 GHz is another story. That means I would be able to hear the aircraft communicating with the a station but not pick up its transponder.RTL1090 is pretty easy to set up and get going. http://rtl1090.com/
I run it on an ACER Netbook, on my XFRD630 Dell..it does not take up too much ram,or stress the CPU excesively.
it has a basic scope feature, it will populate the airspace in the area that you are in/your antenna can RX.
sonicgoose has a good how to..http://sonicgoose.com/tag/rtl1090/
I also pipe the data out to ADSBScope, it has a more detailed layout..But RTL1090 will get you going just fine..
http://www.sprut.de/electronic/pic/projekte/adsb/adsb_en.html
I run it off of a NooElec NESDRSmart...But any descent SDR stick will work...20-25 $ is a good cap on cost.
http://www.nooelec.com/store/nesdr-smartee-sdr.html?SID=6mfv4p5469ds2bbqbqdjc169k5
theres a mild learning curve to dial it in, but its not rocket science.
It also works mobile..I have an MDT set up in my truck...I run SDR#...ADSB..ect...well worth the time to learn.
I am looking at ADSB antennas and wonder if anyone has tried one of these? Looks like they come from China and have something stuffed into ABS plastic. Might work, might not. They quote it as 9dBi, which is about 6.8dBd but a 14 degree vertical beamwidth. They have a second model quoted as 6.5dBi, which is actually 4.3dBd but also with a 14 degree beamwidth. The lower gain should have a broader vertical beamwidth.
But has anyone tried one?
6.86dBd - https://tinyurl.com/yddwdmfb
4.36dBd - https://tinyurl.com/yddwdmfb
The higher the gain of an antenna the narrower the beam width. That's because the aperture is narrowed so that it focuses more on the horizon.Keep in mind that the beamwidth is not sharp and has a shape to it. Your thinking might apply if that were not the case. And the same can be said about the gain.
I checked out the antenna you pointed me to and it looks okay. The mounting brackets don't impress me much. I use professional mounting brackets to withstand hundred mile an hour winds. I got a whole box of them so I don't have to buy them. They're not cheap. At any rate, it looks like they expect you to use 75 ohm coax cable on these antennas and at that high-frequency you're going to have such a stream lost if you're basically going to be unusable. And a very very minimum I would be running lmr400 with a preamp on it. Otherwise it's my budget could afford it I would be using 7/8 or 1 and 1/2 in hard line.The higher the gain of an antenna the narrower the beam width. That's because the aperture is narrowed so that it focuses more on the horizon.
If you have a 20 guys blow me at the base of the mountain and I am using a discone antenna with 0dB gain they will hear me just fine. In fact for quite a distance.
Now then, if we narrow the aperture of the antenna so as to squeeze it off more towards the horizon that are round a bulb we get 6dBd we get more gain out at the horizon and less game directly below the antenna.
The same remains true if we narrow the aperture of an antenna so as to squeeze it off even more towards the horizon that offers are round 9dBd gain the people down below we're going to go, "Bob, who are you talking to?" And that particular case I station from Mammoth Lakes, California heard me because he had a clear path to me and I to him. To elevated stations have much greater range and High Gain antennas other situations.
The point is that the beamwidth should be greater with the Lesser antenna because it's pattern is not tightened towards the horizon. This is one reason I'm aware of that airport control Towers use antennas that can look nearly straight up. They look like discounts but they're meant for VHF only I guess. I don't know. I'd have to ask somebody that knows. But I can tell you that there's a multi Spike and 10 other chooses the path of least resistance and it works against the ground for gain.
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