Rainy weekend project: DIY antenna for the ADS-B station

Up until now, I've been using my ADS-B station with a generic 1090 antenna. It did the job: my station routinely tracked around 40-50 aircraft on a normal day, with the current record of 67 machines on July 28. I did entertain the idea of building a DIY antenna, but I never managed to make any meaningful progress.

Fast-forward to last weekend. The weather wasn't conducive to outdoor activities, and there was nothing exciting on the menu in NUE anyway. So looking for something interesting to do, I remembered that I once saw a forum thread, discussing beginner-friendly DIY ADS-B antenna designs. And sure enough, digging though my bookmarks led me to the Three Easy DIY Antennas for Beginners thread on the FlightAware forum. I don't know much about antennas, and my DIY skills can be charitably described as modest, so I opted for the simplest design possible: the Quick Spider antenna. It uses an RG6 coaxial cable with F connectors and not much else. So I figured that if I fail, my losses will be limited to a cheap cable.

I ordered the required cable, and as soon as it arrived I went to work. Measuring, cutting, stripping, and bending wires turned out to be unexpectedly easy. The trickiest part was inserting short wires into the cable's tubing. It took me about 45 minutes to assemble the antenna. But the idiot that I am, I ordered the wrong pigtail cable to connect the antenna to the AirNav RadarBox FlightStick I use with my ADS-B station. Thankfully, I had a spare antenna foot with a cable featuring a SMA connector. So I cut the cable, and with some persistence and swearing, I managed to connect the cable to the antenna — with a generous amount of duct tape holding the contraption together.

I'll be honest, I was pretty pleased with the final result. Now it was time to test the antenna. I taped it to a coffee can, placed the can on a window sill, plugged the antenna into the FlightStick, and...

OK, the range saw only a modest increase compared to the generic ADS-B antenna, but the number of tracked aircraft jumped up noticeably. With the new antenna, the ADS-B station now tracks 65-75 aircraft on average, with the peak of 85 machines. More importantly, FRA — that has always been tantalizingly close yet out of reach — is now in the range of my ADS-B station.

Next came the toughest challenge yet: convincing the missus to let the contraption sit on the window sill until I find a better location. I was able to sell the idea that the antenna makes a rather decent Christmas decoration.

There is one thing that puzzles me, though. Here's what the current range looks like:

I mean, what's up with the tentacle reaching beyond 150 nautical miles? How and why is that possible? Anyway, it has been a fun little project, and I'm really glad that it worked out the way I hoped it would.