"NewGen SDR" is FlightAware Orange w/o amp?

[polkaroo]

Interesting design! Bought a "Newgen.RTL2832SDR" stick that's being sold all over the standard places to get cheap electronics. Took one apart and thought it looked really similar to the FlightAware Orange dongle. There's a few extra components on the FAO that I assume is part of the amplifier stage? I'll try to get a better camera to take more closeup photos if anyone has the training to examine the differences.

 

[Dirk_SDR]

Yes, the amplifier is missing on the NEWGEN stick.

 

[AB5ID]

How wideband is the amplifier on the orange stick?

 

[Dirk_SDR]

How wideband is the amplifier on the orange stick?

I read in the FlightAware forum that it has 19dB @1090MHz, but only a few dB e.g. at 100MHz, so distorts the input signal with best reception centered at ADS-B. So it's obviously not a wideband LNA from 24 to 1766MHz.

 

[polkaroo]

The FlightAware Orange works great for scanning 900 and 7/800, 450 is below average, and deaf for anything VHF. The Blue version is useless for anything but ADS-B as it has a very narrow filter. Obviously for FA sticks we're using it outside of its design parameters so I don't expect support.

I had two Orange sticks in the car that I used constantly and both failed after about 3 years of regular scanning in the sense that DSDPlus/FMP24 reports the serial as a long string of numbers, and RTLTool can't (re)write a new serial to it. I'm not sure about the experience of others.