ADS-B Antenna 1090Mhz Antenna MCX Plug 2.5dbi Magnet Base ADS-B Aerial Receiver with RG174 1M &MCX Female to SMA Male Adapter 1090MHz ADS-B RTL SDR Software Defined Radio USB Stick Dongle Tuner

I picked this antenna up to use with the blue ADSBexchange dongle and the performance honestly surprised me. For something so small and inexpensive it pulls in aircraft signals extremely well. I have tested a lot of 1090 MHz antennas over the years and this one hangs right with the more expensive options without any drama. The magnet base is strong and works great on anything metal. Stick it to a window frame or a filing cabinet and the signal jumps up instantly. Even indoors the reception holds steady which is rare at this frequency. If you pair it with a good dongle you will have no problem tracking aircraft far outside your immediate area. The MCX connector fits tight and does not wiggle loose which is important when you are running a receiver for days at a time. Once it is connected you can forget about it. If you want an easy and reliable way to get into ADS-B or you need a backup antenna for your setup this one is absolutely worth it. It punches far above its size and price. When paired with the ADSBexchange blue dongle it becomes a tiny powerhouse that just works. I would buy another one without thinking twice.

I just got this antenna, tested with an analyzer then installed it, and rebooted it. I was getting between 40-50nm of flight positions, now I am getting between 80-100nm. Is that a vast improvement? Depends on how you look at it. This FlightAware server is in a building along with the antenna in a less than desirable location inside. Double the nm distance of visibility is great for me. I did test the antenna on an analyzer before I installed it on the FlightAware USB stick, and it looked slightly better than the stock antenna. I did not expect double the distance of position visibility. The magnet is weak but it does work for indoors. Just stick it on something metal and it will work fine. It didn't want to stand on a wooden desk. LOL. That said, great antenna for the small price you pay to get more positions further away. I hope this helps.

The ASDB FlightStick is no more than an RTL-SDR in a fancy package and a higher price. It seems to be geared toward feeding data into the RadrBox.com / AirNav Radar website The only directions I could find to get things running is to connect it to a Raspberry PI and let it become a "Feeder" I reached out to their help desk a few days back that said messages would be answered in 24 hours. Still no word. The device is recognized by dump1090 though you may have to use Zadag to get it to connect. It shows up in the device mananger as Bulk input device. No software is provided with thre device and I could not find any on there website. The package lists one of the features as "Alerts, Weather, Flight and Aircraft Photos". ADSB 978 provides weather not ADSB 1090 and you have to be close to the tower or in the air to receive that

Increased the range of my ADS-B receiver and daily contact count by about 25% over a telescopic antenna of about the same length. I used the same mounting point as the antenna it replaced, indoors but close to the outside wall with the longest view to a horizon (West) and used some thin steel sheet to mount it upon to try to give it some pattern elevation via a ground plane. I have a 2500 foot rise to a mountain ridge in the opposite direction (East) and a military restricted training airspace to the North West so basically only have useful North/South/Southwest aspects, local traffic and some limited duration East/West direction high airway contacts to my far South and North. Maximum range increased from a consistent 90 miles to a consistent 113 miles, continuous contact counts are naturally more variable but busy time to the local hubs show continuous contact count increase from 20 or under to regularly just under 30. Peak daily individual aircraft contacts including position increased from consistent mid-800s to consistent mid-1100s, obviously varying based on day-of-week and holiday traffic schedules. Peak position contacts per-hour increased from under 2500 to about 5000, though most are obviously progressing position reports for a limited set of aircraft. The whole deployment is to a USB ADS-B FlightAware Pro Stick Plus passed through from a linux host to a minimal Debian virtual machine running the Flight Radar 24 data gatherer. All functional elements now have UPS power back up that should handle several hours of grid downtime. The other buyer's message reporting the antenna SWR at 1090MHz is interesting and since I also have a nanoVNA I tested my antenna at 978MHz and 1090MHz, it has a SWR of about 2:1 at both frequencies because the antenna has a characteristic impedance of about 25 Ohms and most ADS-B receivers, including mine, have a 50 Ohm characteristic input impedance. My antenna has capacitive reactance at 1090MHz, so I would expect a slightly longer version to be better, I'll look for a lock nut that permits length adjustment. The product page information on the antenna features that says it has a characteristic impedance of 50 Ohms appears untrue to me, though I concede I was testing a 275mm band antenna indoors, so there could be lots of parasitic causes. The unmatched characteristic impediance will result in small power level reflection and re-radiated signal. So some very low signal levels that have incident energy normally capable of activating the receiver will reflect enough energy to leave insufficient input energy to activate the receiver. That's only going to have much effect on the effective range of the antenna, assuming a reference ADS-B transmitter power on aircraft. So, the poor impedance match effectively reduces receiver sensitivity for long distance sources. At flight level 430 such a source probably has a radio horizon of about 300 miles and this antenna improved my range from about 90 to about 115 miles. Unless you want to keep buying replacements it's not worth changing the feed-line length, building a matching network or bending the antenna to improve the characteristic impediance towards 50 Ohms. However, I'm dropping from 5* to 4* based on the poor impedance match and the product page's documented 50 Ohms characteristic impedance not being what I measure from the antenna (25 Ohms). A 50 Ohm input impedance would be expected from ADS-B receivers so I'm leaving it to the manufacturer to fix. It still has the improvements I document above over a telescoping antenna but a more accurate impedance match could make those results better still.

I feed a number of ADS-B monitoring sites. When I replaced the standard, short RTL-SDR antenna with this one, I was amazed to find that it was capturing signals from almost twice as many aircraft, including some just inside the 200 NM ring. And my antenna location is less than optimum - it is sitting on a window sill indoors. This was surprising because this antenna is considerably longer than the original, and some suggest that the length of the original antenna should actually be shortened for optimum frequency response. It could be that this longer antenna presents more cross-sectional area to capture 1090 MHz signals. Regardless of the theory behind it, this antenna “just works good” for ADS-B. To be honest, I bought this antenna to experiment with, thinking I would have an extra base and connector. After installing it, I see no need for further experimentation.

Didn’t arrive with the advertised connector.

After reading most of the positive review I bought the antenna. Product is as described. But its performance is not as expected. Because I was expecting at least it will increase few nm range to my existing system. I am using home made antenna (uploading image) which is covering 57 nm and tracking around 110 flight on average per day. But this antenna disappointed me: It could track 75 flights and the range was 26 nm max. So I am not using it now. Just using the existing home made one... May be all others positive reviewer's antennas are placed in higher altitude. Mine is at 45 m ASL. I was expected too much as one of the review I read was saying when they got more range and catch more flights immediately when they plugged in. May be its true. But in my case I am not happy.. If some experts reading this please suggest how I can increase or use this antenna more effectively.

Had this for some time now and it works great even indoors. It does seem to be targeted for for 1090mhz range. Works great with the rtlsdr dongle. I can track things roughly 150km away which is great for something this small.

Takes one second to plug in. I use this for a FlightAware PiWare receiver at my condo. The magnetic bottom attaches to my balcony railing. Range is approx 300nm (I’m on the 10th floor) within line of sight.