Radio For Everyone: Testing the RTL-SDR.com Triple Filtered ADS-B LNA, Amplified Coketenna

Akos, author of his blog 'Radio for Everyone' has recently reviewed our new RTL-SDR.com Triple Filtered ADS-B LNA. In the review he compares our ADS-B LNA against another external ADS-B LNA by Uputronics and against the FlightAware Prostick and Prostick+. The tests use the external LNA's plugged directly into the dongle in order to more fairly compare against the FlightAware dongles which have LNA's built in to the dongles themselves. From his results the RTL-SDR.com ADS-B LNA appears to have near identical results with the Uputronics LNA, and slightly better results compared to the FlightAware dongles. Akos has not yet tested the main use-case of the LNA, which is to use it at the end of a run of coax cable, however he plans to do this in a future test. Also in his second post Akos shows how to build a simple amplified Coketenna using our ADS-B LNA.

On the subject of ADS-B performance we note that there are two ways to set up a system for optimal reception (apart from the antenna). The first is to place the computing and radio devices (such as a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR) as close to the antenna as possible (leaving a ~1m coax run to avoid local interference from the Pi). For this type of setup it is cheaper to use a FlightAware Prostick Plus RTL-SDR dongle since this has an ADS-B LNA built into it. However, the disadvantage is that you may need to set up a Power over Ethernet system, or find a remote power source, and possibly place the Pi in a difficult to service location such as in an attic or up a mast.

The second option is to use an external ADS-B LNA close to the antenna, and run coax down to the computing device which is positioned in a more accessible location. The LNA will negate any losses in the coax cable, and with high enough gain on the LNA, using quality coax is not such a high requirement since those losses are negated by sufficient LNA gain. Both methods will yield similar excellent performance.

Tested ADS-B LNA's and ADS-B RTL-SDR Dongles
Tested ADS-B LNA's and ADS-B RTL-SDR Dongles
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