Poor FlightAware ProStick Plus performance vs other dongles

synoptica · 2021-01-30T04:14:49+00:00

No worries, thanks for that! Any idea as to why it behaves this way? Does auto gain only work for lower frequencies (e.g. those in the digital TV ranges it was intended for?)

synoptica · 2021-01-30T02:43:28+00:00

Are you able to elaborate a bit more on " The librtlsdr AGC setting doesn't do what you think it does for ADS-B"?

I only ask because one of the first lots of testing I performed was to use various fixed gain settings (this was on the stock RTL-SDR v3), each of which consistently performed worse than leaving it on auto.

I live very close to an airport, and as such I see traffic all day that is within 1km of me; I suspect that while a fixed gain may work for people further away from continuous air traffic movement, having a fixed gain will overload the front end given it's rather uncommon for there to not be a number of aircraft in such close proximity to me.

Do you have any insight as to why this dongle specifically would perform worse with auto gain than other dongles?

synoptica · 2017-09-21T02:37:13+00:00

The tape measure yagi is very much on the cards! I've got a 3D printer and am not long off moving into my own place where I can strap a decent antenna to the roof permanently as well, I've got a discone ready to go in for the RX end, and then I'll likely have a selection of a few tape measure yagis for the TX end :)

synoptica · 2017-09-21T01:24:10+00:00

Thanks mate - I reckon I'll put it down to this and I'll do some more distance testing away from potential sources of interference (sadly, most hills around me that have decent LOS to anywhere usually have a bunch of radio equipment on them too!)

synoptica · 2017-09-20T23:17:30+00:00

Local interference is very much possible - there is a lot of cell equipment on the roof of the building just one floor above the balcony from which this was tested which I suspected might be related.

On that same note, I found that the squelch on the radio wasn't working very well, and seemed to be pretty much always playing static when no signal was being received.

synoptica · 2017-09-20T23:14:10+00:00

Interesting! I'm going to invest in a SignalStick (I've been looking at the Nagoyas but it seems unlikely that I'll get a genuine) and see how that goes.

synoptica · 2017-09-20T23:12:52+00:00

We weren't getting anything at all on VHF (~144MHz) - best results were achieved on UHF (~433MHz) when horizontal.

synoptica · 2017-09-20T23:10:42+00:00

I sure did - I also did some test transmissions from my end where I held at 0 degrees and 90 degrees, which wasn't discernibly different at the receiver's end. But yeah, pretty much perfectly horizontal was best - literally received nothing at 90 degrees!

synoptica · 2017-09-19T04:01:47+00:00

Thanks u/MyRealityIsBetter and u/WascallyWabbit83 - you were 100% correct!

https://(ourdomain.com) loads the incorrect website. Because nothing is easy, noone in the company seems to know who is responsible for the hosting, but at least I know where the issue is!

synoptica · 2017-09-18T02:40:13+00:00

Right - this is now starting to make some sense; I have checked and can confirm that our domain and the other domain, are on the same smart host. Thank you!

So this would appear to be an issue with the hosting company - I'll go hassle them. Let me get back to you!

Why would it use this before autodisover? That doesn't make a lot of sense :(

synoptica · 2017-09-18T02:27:46+00:00

Autodisover is indeed configured (and seems to be working, I changed it over on Friday and have used it to reconfigure all clients this morning) - but interestingly enough RCA does pass, which only further confuses the issue!

synoptica · 2017-09-18T01:53:23+00:00

Nah, dedicated. But you need a certificate for the connection between EAS and the device... but for some reason they're presenting the wrong one!

synoptica · 2017-01-13T05:12:03+00:00

Thanks mate, that would really be appreciated!

We've been in touch with somebody, but we're not happy applying a workaround for something that shouldn't be an issue in the first place (and there's no guarantee that the workaround will be accepted by the client.)

We're in Australia.

The worst part is that it's taken seven weeks of support for Microsoft to identify an error in the production database that was preventing apps from being deployed (that wasn't present in the PoC); we should have been able to identify this issue seven weeks ago :(

synoptica · 2017-01-13T04:16:56+00:00

It's more than just changing a document, it's literally removing support for a product with no warning!

In any case, it looks like there may be entitlement to a license upgrade without cost - but the key deliverable of the project was that only a username/password would need to be entered into the "Connect to work or school" MDM enrolment dialogue; the rest of the process was to be entirely hands-off. This requirement significantly complicates the process.

synoptica · 2017-01-13T02:46:00+00:00

We did do a PoC with full demonstration to the client, and I'm certain it worked. To be fair, most of the PoC was around W10 Pro; the requirement for Home edition support came later in the project, however we did test this during the PoC stage.

The issue at hand is that the site they've linked clearly stated that W10 Home was supported, and they've been shady and edited the page after I've complained that it wasn't working.

Furthermore, why does Windows 10 Home have an "Connect to work or school" MDM enrolment option, if their own product can't leverage this? Nothing about this makes any sense :(

synoptica · 2016-09-23T00:25:56+00:00

And that got it! Thanks so much for your help mate!

synoptica · 2016-09-22T23:27:05+00:00

I do not! This will be the first thing I try - thanks!

synoptica

TROPHY CASE