AirNav ADS-B 1090 MHz Outdoor Antenna with SMA Connector and FlightStick Bundle

Installation was the hard part of the process, but after painting it black and a bit of planning, I got it set up on the roof. The terrain is pretty flat around here, and once I got the software fired up (pick any Dump1090 repo on GitHub, but I used FlightAware’s fork) it worked very well! It seems to pick up flights at a range of about 200 nautical miles, which is just insane! Very happy with the purchase, I highly recommend the antenna and the receiver kit.

In uso da molto tempo, in situazione completamente esposta. La qualità costruttiva è ottima, i sigilli hanno resistito a numerosi mesi di freddo e pioggia incessanti senza che l'umidità compromettesse l'antenna. La giunzione cavo-guaina è altrettanto resistente, ma consiglio di proteggerla in modo idoneo se completamente esposta. In abbinata al dongle omonimo su RPI4 funziona egregiamente con i principali sw feeder. (tenere a mente che richiede la totalità della potenza fornita in alimentazione, dunque non è compatibile con altri dispositivi in parallelo sullo stesso hub e necessita di alimentazione esterna se collegata ad hub esterno). La portata, in condizioni favorevoli, eccede facilmente le 250 miglia nautiche senza richiedere stabilizzatore aggiuntivo di segnale.

Goede en stevige antenne. Heeft hier aan de wand van de schuur (3 meter hoogte) een bereik van ruim 125nm (231,5 km)! Even gezocht naar een juiste manier om aan de wand te bevestigen. Bij de bouwmarkt een setje "zadel met klikbevestiging 25mm" gekocht. Zit vast als een huis.

Probado en Windows, no funciona correctamente, el software que lo soporta falla constantemente, algunas de sus opciones han dejado de funcionar. Los mapas son muy pobres, nada que ver con los que puedas ver en la web de RadarBox (no se parecen en nada) Viene sin manual en español y aunque el soporte te responde muy rápido (cuestión de minutos) lo hace en inglés y al final te remiten a un manual en español que cuando lo descargas, ves que es de hace 10 años y poco tiene que ver con el sofwtware y hardware (FlightStick) actual. El artículo fue devuelto

I wasn't expecting this much of a distance gain by purchasing this combo. The dongle with the filter marginally better but not worse than your standard RTL-SDR dongle. But it's cheaper. And for 1090Mhz, its smaller, lighter, and better suited for your permanent 1090Mhz ADS-B project. Still gets pretty warm just like its big brother the Blog V4. The antenna feels well built and solid. The materials it is made from indicate that it will survive harsh weather and a good dose of UV for all of us at high elevation. The antenna cable is hard-wired to the unit. If it isn't then to twist off the cable would require more force than I was willing to exert. This is a bonus if you need to use most of the 25' as you wont loose signal from insertion loss on a connector that isn't needed. Probably not great if you only need 5'. The cable is much more robust than the RG58 50 Ohm you you get with the Blog V4 kit. Made from UV resistant material that I assume wont crumble quickly like non UV material does after a few years at high altitude locations. My little 1090 set-up evolved from your normal RTL-SDR Blog V4 kit with telescoping dipole and is getting better. I got to see first hand the evolution of the setup and range keep getting better and better as parts, positions and height became more ideal. Now I am running a RPI 4 B with the adsb.im image feeding to all the sites and MLAT when available when the ingest sites don't complain about time syncs. Got those coveted free accounts on all the flight trackers. But if you're going to do something, do it well. I got this combo and swapped out only the SDR from the Blog V4 to this much smaller and lighter, green, 1090Mhz, filtered, RadarBox branded dongle. Ran it for 24 hours. No noticeable difference in range or number of positions over 24 hours, however that's a small sample. I do live in a dense urban area with a few cell sites close by. Apparently the baked in filter is supposed to help. I didn't really notice any difference but that is not to say it wont help in other peoples situations. It didn't hurt anything though. So this dongle and antenna kit is by far the most cost efficient way of getting setup as a 1090Mhz feeder. Or the just buy the green dongle as a separate unit and find a different antenna solution. This unit is the least expensive and does the 1090Mhz job just as well as the RTL-SDR Blog V4. Then I swapped out the DIY 1090Mhz spider antenna for the one in this kit and it nearly doubled my range for those high flying planes. Not much you can do about curvature of the earth except get the antenna higher. But this bad boy is seeing planes much farther out that are flying high. Not just a small distance. It's pretty noticeable. And the antenna doesn't look like some DIY project the wife will complain about. So that's a plus. Planes in my local area flying on the usual approach pattern went from -18dBFS as the best received signal but usually -23dBFS to -29dBFS all the way down to -2.0dBFS (closer to zero is better). Previously at the same height I tried the RTL-SDR Blog V4's kit's dipole, a DIY spider antenna for 127Mhz and also one meant for LoRa just for giggles. The one in this kit is a night and day difference. Now to get the rig with the antenna on the roof when the snow clears for a less ghetto looking setup. Some things to note: The ADSB.im is your easiest way right now (Jan 2026) to get set up with ADSB to feed all the sites, or just run locally and not share to ingest sites. The screen shots of the performance gains also show the adsb.im map interface. The adsb.im is so you can easily manage your "feeder" (all your hardware and software) and push your telemetry to all the ingest sites like FlightAware, FlightRadar24 and such all at once, and super easy. You can run multiple dongles on one Pi for different purposes. Like adding in ACARS, VDL2, SONDE and such that need to hit other frequencies outside of the bandwidth of just one SDR dongle. Adsb.im runs headless, so it is web based for management through a browser on other computers/phones/tablets on your local network. So there is no need for lots of CPU/GPU power to run a desktop UI on the RPi. As such you only need a Pi 3 with WiFi (usually) to run this stuff if all it is doing is running the adbs.im 1090Mhz feeder image. Don't waste money on the Pi5 if this is a permanent installation for only a 1090Mhz feeder. Total overkill. The larger the SD card you put in the RPi, the longer it will last. I use A 64GB SD card which may be a bit overkill. Most common issue with permanent long term RPi projects is the SDCard fails from too many rewrites. If you run 2 dongles off of one Pi. One dongle for ADSB and one dongle to stream the local air voice band of ATC and planes to an Icecast server, you would want at least a Pi4 B I would imagine. Height is might for antennas. Don't expect miracles if you have no way of getting radio line of sight. But even if you had your non tuned antenna in an attic, I know this unit will more than likely still pick up more planes at altitude and longer distances based off of much improved dBSF levels I am seeing. Reference Pictures: - First image is using a DIY 1090Mhz spider antenna from a height of 15' with a nearby tree (N to NE) of the antenna and a slightly taller building NW of it. - Second image is with this combo 18 hours later at the exact same position - Third image shows the distance and dBSF of the planes the 1090Mhz feeder sees in the bottom right.