Getting started on ADS-B

[PrivatelyJeff]

I’m getting started on local ADS-B monitoring, mainly interested in local public safety aircraft tracking, all within about 20 miles of me and I have questions.

I’m planning on using a wide band scanning antenna (Diamond D130NJ) that runs through two powered Stridsberg multicouplers with LMR400 over about 15 feet that’s used to feed my personal and feed scanners. Is there anything wrong with this? I know there are better ways but for various reasons I would rather do it this way.

I was planning on using virtual radar server on windows for local viewing of tracking. Can this program also feed to the major providers as well or do I need something else for that? Is there a program that can feed to all of them?

What’s SDR receiver should I get? A general one or one of the ADS-B specific? I don’t have any strong transmitters near me and it will only be used for this.

thanks.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I forgot to add that all the equipment will be running 24/7 on a lightweight windows server, in a wiring closet.

 

[frazpo]

Id go flightaware with a raspberry pi. You'll learn just a hint of linux in the process. You can feed VRS from the Pi. Plus you'll have the capability of adding some cool graphing software plus the web interface you'll get from Flightaware.
Ive been at it for quite some time and the best ADSB antenna I've used is a terrawave dual band omni antenna which covers the 1710-2500mhz band. There is also a very simple one you can build from a UHF female connector and a few pieces of copper wire. The flightware forum is a great place to read about the hobby.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

Id go flightaware with a raspberry pi. You'll learn just a hint of linux in the process. You can feed VRS from the Pi. Plus you'll have the capability of adding some cool graphing software plus the web interface you'll get from Flightaware.
Ive been at it for quite some time and the best ADSB antenna I've used is a terrawave dual band omni antenna which covers the 1710-2500mhz band. There is also a very simple one you can build from a UHF female connector and a few pieces of copper wire. The flightware forum is a great place to read about the hobby.

Sure, ideally that would be best and if there was a hole in my area for coverage, it would be something I could consider, but due to lack of time/money, antenna mount points and the existence of an infrastructure already in place, I’d prefer to use what I have already (antenna, feed line and computer are already working and in place). This is mainly for my own use, everything/everyone else is secondary. My local public safety has obfuscated their info in the systems so it’s hard to track them sometimes. I’m just trying to avoid buying the dongles and hooking them up and ending up with literally nothing or having them melt due to heavy use.

 

[vagrant]

@PrivatelyJeff - I am about 40-50 miles north of Kings county and I feed ADSBexchange.com. I may already track and feed what you are looking for, so give it a whirl. Also, your plan for that equipment will probably work for the 20 mile range you want. I use VRS at work with a dongle and a Windows computer. I get 10 miles with an ADS-B antenna indoors.

The setup I use for ADSBExchange.com at home is:
- DPD productions ADS-B antenna 30’ AGL
- 50’ RG6 coax (yeah, RG6)
- ADS-B filter/amp for 1090 MHz
- RTL-SDR USB dongle for $20
- Raspberry Pi v3b+
- A short USB patch cable between the dongle and Raspberry Pi to reduce the heat.
- A small 5v fan that blows on the Pi board and is powered by the GPIO pinout
- The software is an image ADSBExchange provides for free to run on the Pi. It will allow you to share the feed with them as well as look at just your own feed locally

This thread provides an idea on the range with the above. I do it for the MLAT.

Show Us Your Blips!

Here are two ADSBexchange feed captures of the last 8 hours of tracks at 0200 UTC Jan, 7, 2022. I am in central California. The first one with many lines is civilian and military. The one with fewer tracks is military and U2 if any. ( Not all Mil air of course ) What kind of tracks or range are...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

@PrivatelyJeff - I am about 40-50 miles north of Kings county and I feed ADSBexchange.com. I may already track and feed what you are looking for, so give it a whirl. Also, your plan for that equipment will probably work for the 20 mile range you want. I use VRS at work with a dongle and a Windows computer. I get 10 miles with an ADS-B antenna indoors.

The setup I use for ADSBExchange.com at home is:
- DPD productions ADS-B antenna 30’ AGL
- 50’ RG6 coax (yeah, RG6)
- ADS-B filter/amp for 1090 MHz
- RTL-SDR USB dongle for $20
- Raspberry Pi v3b+
- A short USB patch cable between the dongle and Raspberry Pi to reduce the heat.
- A small 5v fan that blows on the Pi board and is powered by the GPIO pinout
- The software is an image ADSBExchange provides for free to run on the Pi. It will allow you to share the feed with them as well as look at just your own feed locally

This thread provides an idea on the range with the above. I do it for the MLAT.

Show Us Your Blips!

Here are two ADSBexchange feed captures of the last 8 hours of tracks at 0200 UTC Jan, 7, 2022. I am in central California. The first one with many lines is civilian and military. The one with fewer tracks is military and U2 if any. ( Not all Mil air of course ) What kind of tracks or range are...

forums.radioreference.com

ok, thanks. I just wanted to make sure I can make it work the way I’m wanting. I’ve used the various websites before to track the aircraft, but I want something for myself for when some service invariably goes down for whatever reason. I’m not overly concerned with setting up a higher quality system since coverage in my area is so good.

 

[vagrant]

This thread now has me curious. I am going to switch over to my discone and try it with and without the filter/amp combo.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

This thread now has me curious. I am going to switch over to my discone and try it with and without the filter/amp combo.

Post your results if you don’t mind. I curious as well.

 

[vagrant]

Initial testing does not look promising. At this time of the morning I had only one aircraft that was within 25 nm and it briefly showed up when going through the ADS-B filter/amp and it was 20k+ altitude. I'm using 50' of LMR-400 and the discone antenna is 30' AGL. I know the discone would be unfriendly at that freq, but I thought it would work to some degree. My SWR is 2.2 at 1090 MHz on that discone. I connected an SDR to look at the signals and nothing. ( Important note: I have a cellular tower around 120' away )

As I noted earlier, I use a tuned 1090 antenna indoors at the office and it does better. Others may have different results for ADS-B using a discone...and zero cellular towers nearby.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

Initial testing does not look promising. At this time of the morning I had only one aircraft that was within 25 nm and it briefly showed up when going through the ADS-B filter/amp and it was 20k+ altitude. I'm using 50' of LMR-400 and the discone antenna is 30' AGL. I know the discone would be unfriendly at that freq, but I thought it would work to some degree. My SWR is 2.2 at 1090 MHz on that discone. I connected an SDR to look at the signals and nothing. ( Important note: I have a cellular tower around 120' away )

As I noted earlier, I use a tuned 1090 antenna indoors at the office and it does better. Others may have different results for ADS-B using a discone...and zero cellular towers nearby.

What style of discone?

 

[frazpo]

It sounds like the OP is wanting to go economical. As far as cheap homebrew antennas go this will definitely get the distance he is wanting. Maybe even mounted within his closet he's placing his setup in. I still have the original one I made, it did very well. I would invest in one of the amp/1090 RTL combos from the major feeds sites.

 

[737mech]

I use the RTL-SDR dongle V3 with the Flightaware filter. The antenna is a sensor systems S65-5366-10L mounted to a small plate of aluminum. Then instead of using long coax run I ran an extended powered usb cable from monoprice.com So the dongle and filter are up there with the antenna housed below the plate. Range is great covers Southern Nevada. I see it on VRS and the decoder is Dump1090.
Another setup I use when out camping is a Pi 3b two sdrs 1090/978 and a program called stratux. The pi sends wifi to my ipad where I can see the aircraft tracking on the flight plan Go app. Stratux can be used to feed almost all the available efb apps.
So a couple of ways to track aircraft.

 

[devicelab]

Honestly, my advice would be NOT to do ADS-B monitoring -- put your money somewhere else. My only exception would be if you're somewhere remote and isolated -- in terms of location. If you really want to burn money then by all means go for it -- if only for the technical knowledge and experience. There's so much data now it's kind of pointless.

Just be careful on how much you spend -- it can add up quickly -- and the results are not as exciting as you may think. And remember, I'm also referring to cost (physical) and cost (time) -- because there's some investment needed on both sides of that coin.

 

[dlwtrunked]

Honestly, my advice would be NOT to do ADS-B monitoring -- put your money somewhere else. My only exception would be if you're somewhere remote and isolated -- in terms of location. If you really want to burn money then by all means go for it -- if only for the technical knowledge and experience. There's so much data now it's kind of pointless.

Just be careful on how much you spend -- it can add up quickly -- and the results are not as exciting as you may think. And remember, I'm also referring to cost (physical) and cost (time) -- because there's some investment needed on both sides of that coin.

Different people want to do different things. Most people here do things I find boring but they would find things I do boring.

 

[dlwtrunked]

I’m getting started on local ADS-B monitoring, mainly interested in local public safety aircraft tracking, all within about 20 miles of me and I have questions.

I’m planning on using a wide band scanning antenna (Diamond D130NJ) that runs through two powered Stridsberg multicouplers with LMR400 over about 15 feet that’s used to feed my personal and feed scanners. Is there anything wrong with this? I know there are better ways but for various reasons I would rather do it this way.

I was planning on using virtual radar server on windows for local viewing of tracking. Can this program also feed to the major providers as well or do I need something else for that? Is there a program that can feed to all of them?

What’s SDR receiver should I get? A general one or one of the ADS-B specific? I don’t have any strong transmitters near me and it will only be used for this.

thanks.

The discone is not the best choice for this. An ADS-B antenna off Amazon will do better. In addition, the Stridsberg multicoupler, though good (I use them) will not give you more signals at that frequency (in fact it is only spec'd to 1000 MHz and you will be wanting to receive 1090 MHz)---something with actual gain might and may be mast mountable which is better (you may need a cheap filter depending on location). Neither are very very expensive. If you can afford, one of the SDRPlay models or AirSpy (my choice though I have both) will do well, but if just starting or uncertain, I would get a cheap SDR dongle and first play with it and the software--you may find it good enough.

 

[vagrant]

@PrivatelyJeff - I am testing using a regular full sized discone. The Radio Shack brand that favors 100~500 MHz like other discone antennas.

Right now around 11:00 AM, with more aircraft to sample, the results have improved with just the discone going to the RTL-SDR V3 dongle. I am receiving aircraft at 100' and up near the airport around five miles away. Within 10 nm I am tracking aircraft 600 and up, as I have a LE helicopter doing its thing. Within 25 nm I am receiving aircraft at 5000' and up, but not always. The higher they climb the better. I also need to note that the receive is not as constant as it would be with an improved/tuned antenna and or a $50 ADS-B filter/amp combo...and I have a cellular tower nearby. I doubt that is doing me any favors without a filter.

At home I use a filter/amp combo like this one I purchased for around $45 over five years ago. It looks very similar and mine may be an early Uptronics brand. Mine has a USB Mini-B plug to take in power. The RTL-SDR V3 dongle was less than $25 shipped. You have the antenna and coaxial cable, so even for $25 you can join in on the fun and capture aircraft that are too low for my receiver to handle out your way. Also note that if you have a short telescoping antenna and a VNA, you can adjust it so that it is tuned for 1090 MHz. Still, your short run of LMR-400 is a good thing at 1090 MHz, even if using a discone for this.

 

[devicelab]

Different people want to do different things. Most people here do things I find boring but they would find things I do boring.

No you're missing the point. I've been doing ADS-B for the past 5 years. I speak from experience. There's a difference.

 

[vagrant]

Huh? Even if I used LDF4-50A Heliax with my system I am doubtful I would pick up aircraft under 1500' for Kings County. You know, below 2k where and what the OP wants to monitor. A team effort with sharing definitely improves things. For $25 the OP can achieve their goal in a limited way and have fun whether they share or not. Still, sharing data with a limited station helps. I know I would appreciate it. If the OP does get bored with it, the SDR can be used for many other things. If they enjoy it, their ADS-B system can improve one step at a time.

I have been doing ADS-B for 10 years. I speak from experience. There is a difference and it is simply whether people enjoy it or not. Your post advising against ADS-B monitoring is peculiar, but appears to be more toward yourself than the OP. You simply posted it publicly. Still, I am sure there are others that enjoy your feed if you share it. Thank you

Honestly, my advice would be NOT to do ADS-B monitoring -- put your money somewhere else. My only exception would be if you're somewhere remote and isolated -- in terms of location. If you really want to burn money then by all means go for it -- if only for the technical knowledge and experience. There's so much data now it's kind of pointless.

 

[dlwtrunked]

No you're missing the point. I've been doing ADS-B for the past 5 years. I speak from experience. There's a difference.

I have been doing it since at least as longer so I have experience also. And there are still things there that get my attention/interests like certain flights. I think your point might have been that one can get the data from the web but that is not clear (true you can get good ADS-B data for most areas from web sites for most areas but some want to do it not tied to the web particularly when mobile like one time when I saw AF 28000 fly over me at low altitude when I was parked in a parking lot far from home).

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

Huh? Even if I used LDF4-50A Heliax with my system I am doubtful I would pick up aircraft under 1500' for Kings County. You know, below 2k where and what the OP wants to monitor. A team effort with sharing definitely improves things. For $25 the OP can achieve their goal in a limited way and have fun whether they share or not. Still, sharing data with a limited station helps. I know I would appreciate it. If the OP does get bored with it, the SDR can be used for many other things. If they enjoy it, their ADS-B system can improve one step at a time.

I have been doing ADS-B for 10 years. I speak from experience. There is a difference and it is simply whether people enjoy it or not. Your post advising against ADS-B monitoring is peculiar, but appears to be more toward yourself than the OP. You simply posted it publicly. Still, I am sure there are others that enjoy your feed if you share it. Thank you

Yep. I would share but there’s already PLENTY of others doing so in my area. I can already track the targeted aircraft on any website, but much like why I have my dozen or so scanners, it’s more about being self reliant and also to glean info that they hid on the websites.