
A quick touch with a hot soldering iron and put it back together (interesting note aside, the heat sink is there for looks only, it has zero contact with any parts – made me smile a little).Īfter spending a week looking at nothing but noise, once I powered it back up I was met with wall to wall signals, it was very exciting and a big ups that I was not losing my mind. Sure enough, it had a dry joint and was open circuit on the input. One evening I just gave up and voided the warranty and opened it up. I spent a week working with it for hours and saw nothing but static. If I had to do it again, I would get at least 6 foot and something that mounts on a pole, not a base. Took me about 2 hours to put it together, seems pretty straight forward.
#What does planeplotter cost free
it arrived, free shipping, in two weeks from Canada. Ok, so that’s the easy part, now getting it to all play nice together and get planes on a map…… I went with the second option since that’s what I already run (I also run PP, but not to the same extent as VRS). There seems to be two main paths, Plane Plotter or VRS ( Virtual Radar Server). What you do with the information I will leave it to you. Jonti’s work is amazing, be sure and give him a few bucks if you go this way. I only know of one application that can do it, Jaero. Once you have the signal, you need to decode it.

Sure, you can get fancy and run some other software, but its mostly a headless setup, so simple is better.
#What does planeplotter cost install
I chose to use SDR#, its free, simple to install and basic enough to do the job. (I just wonder if this is not the source of the drift I am fighting with). If you find something that works, stick with it.Īgain, I have nothing to compare it with. Anything that will work at 1.5gigs should be fine for a test, but you really need something that is stable and sensitive. You need to make sure that your power injector can pass through a 1.5gHz signal, that is the down converted signal from the LNB.įrom the LNB power supply, you then have your RTL-SDR. A little on the high side, but it runs fine through 50 feet of coax. I did not have 13 on hand, so went with 21. The LNB has two voltages, 13 for one polarization, 18 for the other (horizontal and vertical for example). Okay for testing, but no fun for something that you just want to leave running unattended (which is my plan). You will be chasing the signal over a few hours.

The drift will put the signal out of range of the bandwidth every hour or so. Having nothing to compare it with makes it a bit hard, but the short of it is that its not really stable enough.

If you find something that fits the bill, let me know. You want something with low frequency drift, something that is temperature stabilized would help as well. If I was going to do it again, I would go a 6 to 9 foot dish, anything bigger and the pointing accuracy is going to be a ‘problem’ and not worth the extra signal strength. You can (apparently) get by with a 4 foot dish, but I did not want to be scrapping around in the noise, so opted for a 6 foot dish, the wife was not so excited, so we both compromised and went for a 5 foot dish. It could be, but if you are reading this, you probably have hit some snags.Īlso, if you are reading this, you probably have an idea of what you are trying to do, so I will skip the intro and go straight to how I did it.Īnd just to be clear, we are talking about ADS-C, not ADSB, but it looks so similar that many (me included) often get it mixed up. When you write it down, in one sentence, its really very simple Ħ′ dish -> PLL LNA -> 18v DC pass-through PSU -> RTL-SDR -> SDR# -> Jaero -> VRS.Īnd with that signal path, you will have planes on a map.
