Radarspotting

In a similar vein to amateur radio DXing I decided last Saturday to pack the SBS-1er the stock magmount antenna and the laptop and take them up to a vantage point over looking my city with views out to the Tasman Sea. Here at 1611 feet above sea level provides an ideal vantage to 'DX' some ADS-B equipped aircraft.  This only entailed a short drive along a service road to the wind turbine site where there's plenty of parking opportunities.

Previously last year, I took a Beast receiver to the same point with the same antenna but can't recall the max range received.

With the SBS-1er I achieved a pretty good 282.5nm max range for the 4 hours I was up there. The best ranges were mostly out to the northwest capturing Auckland-Sydney/Melbourne tracks. The particular aircraft for the max range was ZK-ZQE operating QFA131 (Melbourne-Auckland).

I think what I would like to try next is taking my main ADS-B antenna up to use instead of the magmount, that, I think, will break the 300nm range! And maybe next summer I might take the whole kit up to greater heights, we have some good mountains here and at a couple of thousand feet it would be an interesting expedition to DX a bit more.

The attached graphic shows the big window out to the north west.

[Attachment deleted by Admin to save file space]

Thanks Mike.

When I did some comparative tests last year, the supplied magmount in the same position as an external antenna performed virtually the same.

Be interesting to see how you get on next time.