Wednesday 5 March 2014

Partial Success with ADS-B Antenna

At lunchtime test today, in the meagre time I have before the laptop's battery dies, and with the ADS-B antenna wedged on the car roof on top of a pair of binoculars and a sponge, I gave reception on the newly built antenna a go.

SDR# clearly showed bursts of signal at 1.09GHz. They seemed a bit weak, whether this is true or whether the proximity of the tower caused desense of the receiver im not sure yet. A bit of fiddling to get ADSBscope and ADSB# playing together and a few aircraft were identified and their altitudes listed. Unfortunately, this test didnt go as well as hoped, and no position data was recovered, meaning none of the aircraft could be plotted.

But, its a start. It shows the antenna does work, as does the software. Whether the antenna works well enough, will take a few more tests to decide.


No comments: