Plane Finder Radar

Mark Daniels

Mark Daniels

Administrator
Staff member
We're very proud to introduce the all new Plane Finder Radar ADS-B receiver.

Our requirement for an ADS-B receiver is simple - high quality data, superb performance, very accurate MLAT and ultra reliable - all at a good price too.

We couldn't find such a thing so decided to design and build our own.

Planefinderradar.png

It's a standalone device - connect it up, run up the web client and track planes!

These are running on the Plane Finder network now - and will be available at an introductory price of £299 (inc VAT) soon.
 
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airbus340 said:
Great, will it work with VRS too? Any specs? And when will it be for sale?
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Hopefully we'll put it for sale in the next few weeks. Stay tuned on this post as we'll shortly update it with the specs etc. This was a sneak preview for forum members!

It works with Plane Plotter now and we have contacted the VRS developers and they will be adding support in the future, not sure how long there.
 
Slightly off topic - I notice from the "stats" screenshot of your new baby that you have Mode-AC data being received. I currently have this disabled on my Beast. If I were to enable it, can Plane Finder make any use of it?
 
MartinC said:
Slightly off topic - I notice from the "stats" screenshot of your new baby that you have Mode-AC data being received. I currently have this disabled on my Beast. If I were to enable it, can Plane Finder make any use of it?
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Hi Martin,

No we don't make any use of it at all. The trouble with it is that you can't 100% be sure if the return is A or C so you can't math it to an aircraft.

The only thing I know that uses it is Plane Plotter and this is why we got the receiver to decode it.
 
Falcon said:
curious about the specs (inside)
Need a betatester ☺
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What sort of specs are you after? You can quote lots of figures but they are very subjective!

No sorry we don't need a beta tester, these have already been running for several months now on our own network and we are more than happy with them. So much so that we thought other people may want one as we think the price point is superb for what it is!
 
Be nice to get one of the new receivers on the roof of the apartment building where my radio club is located.

200ft above ground..how much internet bandwidth does it use..we would only be able to use an internet stick.
 

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airbus340 said:
Is there any comparsion done between this and a USB-dongle in range and message rate?
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Oh yes, much much better than the dongle!

Not 100% scientific but here are some screenshots from an RTL on the same antenna as a Plane Finder Radar.

2016-02-18_09-05-28.png 2016-02-18_09-05-12.png

Chris VE3ZO said:
Be nice to get one of the new receivers on the roof of the apartment building where my radio club is located.

200ft above ground..how much internet bandwidth does it use..we would only be able to use an internet stick.
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I wouldn't recommend running these on an internet dongle at all!
 
Thank you very much Lee, double message rate and quite a few planes more looks promising. Only one more thing I wonder now, can it run with wireless internet or does it need the cable?
 
Also the MLAT is beautifully smooth due to the GPS resolution we have achieved. No smoothing has been done to this at all!

2016-02-18_09-23-57.png
 
Lee Armstrong said:
Oh yes, much much better than the dongle!

Not 100% scientific but here are some screenshots from an RTL on the same antenna as a Plane Finder Radar.

View attachment 2451 View attachment 2452



I wouldn't recommend running these on an internet dongle at all!
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That's quite an improvement. What is the receiver based on? I assume that it has considerably better dynamic range than the dongles 8 bit ADC. Is it software based, or are you using an FPGA?
 
Not based on an SDR at all. FPGA based :)

It had to be to get the accuracy of the timestamps we are after!

The dynamic range of the ADC is much much better too.
 
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I did a quick n dirty comparison between the Plane Finder radar box and the Kinetic SBS3.
Same antenna, fed simultaneously via a Stridsberg powered multi coupler.

Over an hour, the PF box received 8% more planes. The range I estimate at about 6/7% better. Also the reports per aircraft is 11% better than the SBS.

I thought the SBS3 was hot, but the PF box is better. The SBS3 has no comparison with a USB dongle, far better. SBS3 has SDR with ACARS etc so I won't be getting rid of it just yet.

I would highly recommend the Plane Finder box.:)
 
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Thank you Radiosutch,

That is very good to hear.
It's nice to know that all of the work that we put into this was worth it :)

Cheers,
Mark
 
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