FlightAware Feeder

[tigers2007]

I am now official. Apparently there is nobody within over 80 miles of me that has a volunteer receive site so they offered all of the equipment for free. This will be nice as tracking cuts off quite early when I’m near my home airport.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Steve W]

I had to build my own and then set it to feed all the things, not sure 978 is working right though, too little traffic to be sure. Then I had to build one for AIS too. Then I had to build a GPS time server so I know what time it is.

And the weather station needs to come down and be replaced, it only survived our winds for one season.

[tigers2007]

I like that lateral antenna rack. I hope both of my masts survive the winter wind, snow, and ice. I had several feet of snow on the roof last winter. I guess I’ll be a little more aggressive this winter.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Steve W]

The offset thingy is just PVC, but so far has weathered all of our 70MPH+ winds, even when the weather station didn't. But we also get 0 snow, and only about 60-70 inches of rain, which is why I didn't go with a roof penetration.

[EricJ]

You guys are fancy.   My feeder is an old RPi with an RTL-SDR dongle and an el-cheapo antenna that has been running 24/7 on top of my fridge for several years.   I don't think I've touched it since I turned it on...it just keeps going.   It actually gets decent RSSI because the fridge top is a pretty good ground plane.

It's neat to review flight traces on flightaware as you can see where the coverage dropouts are filled in with a straight-line approximation.   They don't seem to happen to me much any more, so I think infill is still happening.

It's also cool that it's economically feasible enough that they can send you the hardware to fill in a coverage hole.

[tigers2007]

A friend of mine put one on top of a mountain in California. I’m not sure if the feds know he did that (they own the facility) but apparently he is receiving aircraft from a ridiculous distance.
I’m watching the aircraft in real-time right now and the data is interesting. It actually shows me the RSSI and dB strength of each aircraft I’m receiving.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Steve W]

Mine is only about 5' above the fridge. On the other hand I have an open ocean view, so I regularly pick up stuff over 200 miles away. 

[carusoam]

To back up a few steps...

https://flightaware.com/adsb/flightfeeder/

This will answer the basic question of... what is that?  

I wasn’t aware of the holes or how they were going to fill them in...

Thanks for sharing the details...

Best regards,

-a-

[tigers2007]

12 hours ago, carusoam said:

To back up a few steps...

https://flightaware.com/adsb/flightfeeder/

This will answer the basic question of... what is that?  

I wasn’t aware of the holes or how they were going to fill them in...

Thanks for sharing the details...

Best regards,

-a-

Good call! I assumed we were all aviation tech nerds. If anyone does not have a free FlightAware account, I recommend you create one. Logging into the website (or app) allows you to see flight data for VFR flights. Also, it will show you recent flight history versus it showing flights from two months ago if you don't have an account.

[orionflt]

I love having the feeder, there are a lot in the area so I built my own.

brian

[EricJ]

Another site that's relevant is http://www.flightradar24.com , and if you have a feeder you can get a business-class membership for free, which removes the 30-minute limit, reduces ads, etc.

This is one is useful for seeing local traffic, figuring out what you just saw fly over you, etc., etc.    My feeder sends data to both flightradar24 and flightaware.  

 

Edited August 16, 2019 by EricJ