Beginner-Want to listen air traffic

[manosspan]

Hello everyone

I have some questions about the installation of the antenna cables etc
a) Can I use aircom cables? (I have few meters laying around from an old wifi setup)
b)I have a vertical antenna made from aircom cable. Can I use it for airtrafic? (It has the same design as the flightaware antenna)
c) My roof where I plan to install the antenna is 20meteres away.Is that too far ?
d)What is the optimal antenna installation when you want to have different bands (Maybe a discone?)
(I want to have available FM,DVB-T, airtracfic, NOAH weather channel)
e)Does the banggood.com sell the original sdr blog?

Thank you in advance
Manos

[hotpaw2]

Aircraft band is moderately wide (just above the broadcast FM band to a bit below the amateur 2M band). For all those bands, I get much better results from a discone antenna in the attic or up above the roof than from any (tuned even) monopole or dipole in the office.

[rtlsdrblog]

Hello everyone

I have some questions about the installation of the antenna cables etc
a) Can I use aircom cables? (I have few meters laying around from an old wifi setup)

It will be fine, just check the connectors as WiFi typically use RP-SMA, which won't work with normal SMA. You'd need an adapter.

b)I have a vertical antenna made from aircom cable. Can I use it for airtrafic? (It has the same design as the flightaware antenna)

The FlightAware antenna is designed for 1090 MHz, so if you have a similar one it won't be that great for Airband which is down at ~120Mhz

c) My roof where I plan to install the antenna is 20meteres away.Is that too far ?

Shouldn't be an issue as long as you have high quality coax cable, and/or an LNA.

d)What is the optimal antenna installation when you want to have different bands (Maybe a discone?)
(I want to have available FM,DVB-T, airtracfic, NOAH weather channel)

Discone or planar disk. But beware that performance of individual bands is worse compared to a tuned single band antenna.

e)Does the banggood.com sell the original sdr blog?

No we don't sell on banggood, only our webstore at www.rtl-sdr.com/store, Amazon, eBay and Aliexpress.

Thank you in advance
Manos

[manosspan]

Thank you for this quick reply. I just bought the usb from Aliexpress

c) My roof where I plan to install the antenna is 20meteres away.Is that too far ?

Shouldn't be an issue as long as you have high quality coax cable, and/or an LNA.
reply:Can I also use I high quality antenna/sat cable. Aircom is a bit bulky..

So if you want different airbands you should have multiple antennas and an antenna selector or something similar?

[snn47]

While the length of coax is not irrelevant, it is the loss of the cable that attenuates your signals. The loss of coax will increase with frequency and quality, e.g. design and materials used.
If your coax cable will add only a few dB loss you will not need a LNA. Since a LNA will amplify all frequencies in its operational bandwidth, with strong transmitters closeby you may overload your receiver unless you add filters to attenuate the strong signlas. For an loss estimation of coax lookup the attenuation in dB/m (mostly for 100 m) of your cable for the receive frequency you want to receive and multiply it by the cable length. This is the loss that your coax will attenuate the signals received by your antenna.
With an antenna on the roof reception should be, despite the added loss, always preferable. Since you want to cover about 118 to 800 MHz you need a broadband antenna, a discone or vertical biconical antenna are omnidiectional vertically polarized, while if mounted horizontally a biconical antenna will provide horizontally polarized bidirectional reception, a LogPer directional. Having the incorrect polarization will attenuate signals transmitted with another polarization by ~20 dB, sometimes also lower if multipath and other effects will come into play.

WIth the antenna on the roof connecting the antenna to the houses lighning protection is imho adviseable.

[rtlsdrblog]

reply:Can I also use I high quality antenna/sat cable. Aircom is a bit bulky..

Absolutely, RG6 is an excellent choice.

[manosspan]

My main problem is that can't bring the aircom cable inside the house because the pipe that I bring cables from outside, inside the home, is almost full.
a)Can use aircom for 5 meters and then sat cable, or it is not recommended? (Edit I just saw the rtlsdr answer)
b)House has no lightning protection(In Greece most of the houses dont have). I have a church at 100 meters with a lightning protection system and a much taller builing with a metal tent on the roof(will that do the job?)
c)I kinda confused with all the antennas you mentioned.(I also need to read a lot about the different types)
For an amateur that just got the SDR stick what you would recommend? At this point I have an DVB-T2 antenna and a 3 meter iron pole in my roof (with a Ubiquity 5GHz antenna for my Internet connection) waiting to install stuff!!

First of all I would like to hear ATC .So I need this antenna type https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... SY355_.jpg ?

Thank all you in advance

[Username]

Where are you from?

For an amateur that just got the SDR stick what you would recommend?

I recommend this Seller: https://www.ebay.de/usr/nooelec?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
The send internationally to.

[manosspan]

Greece Europe

[Username]

Since you are from Europe we dont have no "NOAH weather channel".
The only option is if you life near an Airport the Broadcast the local Information.

Please note I guess in Greece its illegal to receive anything beside of FM Radio, Amateur Radio and PMR446.
The Airband is only if you have an Certificate. The same for Ship Band.