_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yagi antenna in the loft pointed at Edinburgh Airport ~11 km away. 2020-Mar-14, wk.11, 08:05 UTC, Updated airspy-adsb from v1.57 to v.185 2021-Feb-07, wk.06, 06:30 UTC, Added filtered pre-amp between antenna feed and 4-way splitter 2021-Jun-30, wk.27, 14:00 UTC, Add PC Drammen, prepare for PC Ystad retirement, possibly Bergen & Torvik too! 2021-Jul-11, wk.28, 09:00 UTC, Added RasPi-25 (Pi4) with Airspy R2, feeding PC Drammen 2021-Aug-10, wk.33, 00:00 UTC, Retired client PC Torvik. 2021-Aug-13, wk.33, 09:00 UTC, Re-arrangement of feeds, restart data collection. 2021-Sep-02, wk.36, 12:00 UTC, Add RasPi-21 with FlightAware feed 2021-Sep-05, wk.36, 07:00 UTC, Add FR24 and, later, PlaneFinder feed to RasPi-21 2022-Apr-02, wk.14, 06:30 UTC, Moved RasPi-21 from loft Yagi to outdoor antenna 2023-Jan-23, wk.05, 06:30 UTC, Replaced RasPi-7 with RasPi-9
	RasPi-10/Airspy Mini receiver Clients - PC Ystad Wi-Fi connected Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec) FlightAware stats from RPi-10
	RasPi-25/Airspy R2 receiver Clients - PC Drammen LAN connected Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec)
	RasPi-9/RTL-SDR.COM receiver Clients - PC Stamsund RPi-24 Wi-Fi connected Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec) FlightAware stats from RPi-9 FlightRadar24 stats from RPi-9 Plane Finder stats from RPi-9 PlanePlotter share Ym

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Outside gain vertical (since 2016-Mar-15) Cavity filter, HAB/Uputronics pre-amp. with SAW filter. 2016-Apr-14, wk.15, 06:00 replaced PE1RKI filter with JetVision one until 08:30. Much worse. Back to PE1RKI. 2016-May-16, wk.20, 11:00 updated Airspy to f/w 1.7, and airspy_adsb to v1.16 2016-Jul-17, wk.28, 16:10 UTC, Updated airspy_adsb to v1.17 2016-Aug-07, wk.31, 17:05 UTC, Replaced T-piece with Chinese 1-3 GHz splitter 2016-Aug-13, wk.32, 11:20 UTC, Changed scales from 500 to 600 maximum 2017-Aug-17, wk.33, 13:30 UTC, PC Kiruna changed to nanoADS-B with DC block 2020-May-02, wk.18, 05:10 UTC, Replaced nanoADSB with Airspy R2, airspy_adsb v1.85, on RasPi-12 2020-Aug-12, wk.33, 06:00 UTC, Moved Beast RX from PC Alta to PC Penguin, kept Alta's history 2020-Aug-12, wk.33, 09:20 UTC, Changed Alta to take feed from RasPi-12, doubles CPU or I/O load? 2021-Jul-26, wk.31, 14:00 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with loft Yagi, thunderstorm risk 2021-Jul-30, wk.31, 06:00 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2021-Aug-05, wk.32, 07:30 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with loft Yagi, thunderstorm risk 2021-Aug-09, wk.33, 06:00 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2021-Aug-09, wk.33, 13:10 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with loft Yagi, thunderstorm risk 2021-Aug-11, wk.33, 09:00 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2021-Aug-31, wk.36, 07:00 UTC, replaced Chinese 2-way splitter with 4-way, ~3 dB more loss after the pre-amp 2021-Sep-09, wk.37, 03:45 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with split loft Yagi, thunderstorm risk 2021-Sep-11, wk.37, 03:40 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2022-Feb-23, wk.09, 20:00 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with poor indoor vertical, thunderstorm risk 2022-Feb-25, wk.09, 05:00 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2022-Apr-02, wk.14, 06:30 UTC, Moved RasPi-21 from loft Yagi to outdoor antenna 2022-May-17, wk.21, 09:00 UTC, replaced outdoor antenna with poor indoor vertical, thunderstorm risk 2022-May-18, wk.21, 03:10 UTC, restored outdoor antenna 2022-Jun-29, wk.27, 09:50 UTC, Swapped RX for RasPi-21 from FA Pro stick to RTL-SDR.COM dongle 2022-Oct-28, wk.44, 04:30 UTC, Swapped RX for RasPi-12 from Airspy R2 to AirSpy Mini 2023-Jan-29, wk.05, 15:30 UTC, Swapped RX for RasPi-12 from Airspy Mini to RSP-1A for a change 2023-Jan-30, wk.06, 07:30 UTC, RasPi-12 RX reverted to Airspy Mini
	RasPi-21/RTL-SDR.COM dongle Clients - PC Alta Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec) FlightAware stats from RPi-21 FlightRadar24 stats from RPi-21 Plane Finder stats from RPi-21 PlanePlotter share ZA
	RasPi-12/Airspy-mini receiver Testing RSP-1A from 2023-Jan-29 Client - PC Kiruna LAN connected Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec) PlanePlotter share Xf
	Beast receiver Direct connect - PC Penguin Maximum range (km) Message rate (msgs/sec) PlanePlotter share tD

Other periods: day week month year

How these results were gathered - see here.

Discussion: Note that both message-rate and maximum range are only sampled at 5-minute intervals, the default for MRTG. Thus there is an element of luck in the results in that if an approaching aircraft appears on the distant horizon just at the sample time on one system, but just after the sample time on another, the other system will only record the aircraft some five minutes later when it will be much closer. This is why sometimes the Airspy-based systems may not show as having the maximum range. Try instead to judge whether the maximum range values are more consistently higher on one system than on the other.
The higher message rate does not only imply that more planes are detected. Whilst more planes would give a higher message rate, the better processing in some firmware or software may provide better detection in the presence of multiple signals. In these circumstances, more messages can make for a smoother plot of the track in PlanePlotter.
The maximum range is limited to 500 km (270 nm) and the maximum message rate to 500/second in the plots above, to allow both to be plotted on one graph.

Events (out of date)

2015-Sep-24 08:30 UTC Installed FlightRadar24 feeder on RasPi-8, waiting to here about T-ENLI11

2015-Sep-24 08:30 UTC Installed FlightRadar24 feeder on RasPi-7, but it didn't seem to be connecting to the dump1090 server on port 30005. Seems this needs to be configured as receiver="beast-tcp" rather than "avr-tcp" in the /etc/fr24feed.ini file. It then worked as expected.

2015-Jul-09 11:50 UTC Updated PiAware to 2.1-2

2015-Jul-03 20:15 UTC Updated PlaneFinder client to 3.0.2080

2015-Feb-13 08:15 UTC Added PlaneFinder client 3.0.450 to RasPi-7. Noted about 7% CPU increase and about 30 MB memory increase.

2015-Feb-13 17:00 UTC Changed to RasPi-7 and PiAware 1.20

2015-Feb-08 12:00 UTC Added filter & pre-amp, better results

2014-Nov-19 18:15 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.18

2014-Oct-26 07:25 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.15

2014-Oct-04 07:30 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.13

2014-Sep-12 06:37 UTC Discovered that RasPi-3 hadn't been uploading to Plane Plotter since Sep-06 at 19:35 UTC. Restarted the 1090 processes.

2014-Sep-08 16:25 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.11

2014-Aug-31 15:15 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.9

2014-Aug-24 06:10 UTC Updated PiAware to 1.8

2014-Aug-16 11:00 UTC Installed PiAware 1.5 on RasPi-3

2014-Aug-10 10:55 UTC Updated dump1090 to V1.09.0608.14.

2014-May-27 15:30 UTC Updated dump1090 to V1.08.2705.14 which has more network buffering. Noticed a welcome CPU drop from ~35% to ~32%, which gave a slight CPU temperature drop too.

2014-Apr-02 06:05 UTC Connected back to the EDI-facing Yagi antenna.

2014-Mar-25 09:45 UTC Connected to main antenna instead of the EDI-facing yagi, and changed PC Alta (share tD) from The Mode-S Beast to the RPi for a test for John Locker.

2014-Mar-23 09:10 UTC Add --modeac to the parameters to add mode-A/C decoding. This increased the CPU load from averaging 35% to 45%. Dropped in early April.

2014-Mar-11 07:20 UTC Updated to version 1.08.1003.14 which has a heartbeat to keep the connection with Plane Plotter alive.

2014-Feb-26 - Client PC Ystad is being fed from a microADSB receiver for a temporary test, so it will have no Wi-Fi I/O from the Raspberry Pi server. This also means that the Raspberry Pi is only feeding one PC with data rather than two, so its I/O rate would be expected to be halved.
Unexpectedly, this has rsulted in PC Stamsund's Plane Plotter restarting the TCP connection often during the night when there has been little traffic.

2014-Feb-24 11:20 UTC Updated dump1090 (and ppup1090) to version: 1.08.2302.14. Fixes: (1) missing blocks cause timestamp slips, and (2) incorrect beast binary input/output handling of 0x1a escape characters, but neither should affect my own system.

2013-Nov-10 11:40 UTC Edited /etc/init.d/dump1090.sh to include the ppup1090 program following suggestions from Steve Tickle. This allows the ppup1090 program to start automatically with the rest of the RPi. Tested by a warm reboot. Details are here.

2013-Nov-08 18:40 UTC RasPi-3 seemed to stop working at about the same time as I was setting up a new iPad with iOS-7. Co-incidence? Restarted OK, and did a manual start of ppup1090

2013-Nov-05 10:35 UTC Restarted PPupload function, as it had not been restarted at the Oct-20 reboot. dump1090 is at version 1.07.0710.13

2013-Oct-09 06:45 UTC Updated dump1090 to 1.07.06.10.13 to add the PPupload functionality.

2013-Sep-11 11:45 UTC RasPi-3 went off the air, not pingable. Power-off restart at 20:10, and it looks OK.

2013-Aug-21 14:00 UTC Updated dump1090 program to version 1.07.1908.13. Rebooted RasPi-3 to ensure it started OK, and to get a standardised starting condition.

2013-Aug-20 18:00 UTC Noted a zero message rate on PC Ystad from RasPi-3 dump1090 program. Tried pinging RasPi-3 and that was OK, tried stopping and restrting Plane Plotter but that didn't help. Tried closing and re-opening Plane Plotter but that didn't work. On RasPi-3, the dump1090 process was running (1 day 8 hours out of 8 days 36 hours up-time), but did a restart (sudo /etc/init.d/dump1090.sh start) and the TCP started flowing once again.

2013-Jul-24 18:20 UTC PC taking data from RasPi-3 showed no planes and zero message rate. RasPi-3 responding normally, and dump1090 process still running. Next time I looked, Plane Plotter had started seeing data again, so its automatic restart of the TCP/IP connection seems to have resolved the issue.

2013-May-30 06:20 UTC dump1090 appeared to have stopped sending data, so restarted it.

2013-May-18 11:05 UTC Updated dump1090 to 1.06.1405.13.

2013-May-16 19:40 UTC Added PC Ystad back in as receiver PC, RasPi now feeding two PCs.

2013-Apr-29 07:30 UTC Changed receiver PC from Ystad to Stamsund.

2013-Apr-29 04:50 UTC Moved the Raspberry Pi to the shack, connected to a yagi antenna pointing at the airport.

2013-Apr-28 07:10 UTC Moved the Raspberry Pi back to the spare room, may have been causing interference to 137 MHz APT reception. Mag mount antenna wasn't well located.

2013-Apr-19 16:40 UTC Updated dump1090 to 1.01.1924.13. Got start/stop script working.

2013-Apr-15 15:30 UTC Playing with script to start and stop dump1090, buffer size now 150. Later, buffer size: 500, number: 5.

2013-Apr-14 05:30 UTC Updated dump1090 to 1.00.1404.13 with buffer size 100. May reduce CPU overhead.

2013-Apr-09 14:00 UTC Moved the Raspberry Pi into the loft, slightly better antenna.

Using the Raspberry Pi as a Wi-Fi Plane Plotter server
Installing and configuring the Raspberry Pi
Using the Raspberry Pi as a stratum-1 NTP server